[Next project] The Lost Stradivarius by John Meade Falkner

[Sidney Hirschman]

Thanks for your help, Lukas, Alex, and Robin, on my very first project. I immediately want to jump into another one!

As a longtime appreciator of horror fiction, I'd love to do the classic Lost Stradivarius next. And afterwards, perhaps propose other grandfather-works of horror that haven't been SE-ified.

Transcription: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14107

Page scans: https://archive.org/details/cu31924031220118/

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Stradivarius

Now that I've got a handle on the process, I think this will go quite a bit smoother! Thanks all.

Sid

[Alex Cabal]

Sure, you can work on that. Please send a link to your repo once you get
started.

This is set up as a frame narrative and it has a preface, so check the
manual for how to do that. An example of frame narrative structure is in
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-allan-poe/the-narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym-of-nantucket

Don't include the 'About the author' section.

On 10/30/25 12:48 PM, Sidney Hirschman wrote:
> Thanks for your help, Lukas, Alex, and Robin, on my very first project.
> I immediately want to jump into another one!
>
> As a longtime appreciator of horror fiction, I'd love to do the

> classic /Lost Stradivarius /next. And afterwards, perhaps propose other

> grandfather-works of horror that haven't been SE-ified.
>
> Transcription: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14107
> Page scans: https://archive.org/details/cu31924031220118/
> Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Stradivarius
>
> Now that I've got a handle on the process, I think this will go quite a
> bit smoother! Thanks all.
>
> Sid
>

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[Sidney Hirschman]

Thanks! Repo is at https://github.com/s-dney/john-meade-falkner_the-lost-stradivarius

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Vince will manage with Emma reviewing.

On 10/30/25 4:29 PM, Sidney Hirschman wrote:
> Thanks! Repo is at https://github.com/s-dney/john-meade-falkner_the-
> lost-stradivarius
>
> On Thursday, October 30, 2025 at 3:36:11 PM UTC-4 Alex Cabal wrote:
>
> Sure, you can work on that. Please send a link to your repo once you
> get
> started.
>
> This is set up as a frame narrative and it has a preface, so check the
> manual for how to do that. An example of frame narrative structure
> is in
> https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-allan-poe/the-narrative-of-

> arthur-gordon-pym-of-nantucket <https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/
> edgar-allan-poe/the-narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym-of-nantucket>

>
> Don't include the 'About the author' section.
>
> On 10/30/25 12:48 PM, Sidney Hirschman wrote:
> > Thanks for your help, Lukas, Alex, and Robin, on my very first
> project.
> > I immediately want to jump into another one!
> >
> > As a longtime appreciator of horror fiction, I'd love to do the
> > classic /Lost Stradivarius /next. And afterwards, perhaps propose
> other
> > grandfather-works of horror that haven't been SE-ified.
> >

> > Transcription: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14107 <https://
> www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14107>
> > Page scans: https://archive.org/details/cu31924031220118/

> <https://archive.org/details/cu31924031220118/>
> > Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Stradivarius
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Stradivarius>
> >
> > Now that I've got a handle on the process, I think this will go
> quite a
> > bit smoother! Thanks all.
> >
> > Sid
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> > Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
> send
> > an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> > <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> > To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/>
> >
> standardebooks/744f6f29-1f5e-4ac8-9217-5e6fd2c38f0an%40googlegroups.com <http://40googlegroups.com>
> > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ <https://groups.google.com/d/
> msgid/>
> >
> standardebooks/744f6f29-1f5e-4ac8-9217-5e6fd2c38f0an%40googlegroups.com <http://40googlegroups.com>?
> > utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

>
> --
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[Sidney Hirschman]

Thanks. Two questions on outliers, which I hope (though do not expect!) will be the last for this one:

1. The book uses a few different foreign-language music phrases frequently; they all refer to a type of song/dance you'd play on the violin. In the original text, these are in quotes with the first letter capitalized:

• “Gagliarda”
• “Coranto”
• “Sarabanda”
• “Minuetto”

Now, these will be obviously be lowercase and w/o quotes according to the MoS, but I would be grateful for some guidance on italicization. "Coranto" is in Merriam-Webster as an alternate spelling of "courante," but the other three seem to be alternative spellings or foreign-language words not listed in MW (gagliarda = galliard, sarabanda = sarabande, minuetto = menuetto). 

Since combinations of these are frequently used in close proximity to each other, and considering that most people won't know what a "coranto" nor a "sarabanda" is, would it be strange if "coranto" were not in italics but the other three were?

Ex: They played the coranto and the sarabanda, and in the singular fascination of the music John had entirely forgotten the episode of the previous evening, when, as the bold air of the gagliarda commenced...

2. In the final note, the letter-writer describes the inscription of a grave:

At our feet was the great brass of one Sir Roger de Maltravers. I pointed out the end of the inscription to my companion⁠—“CVIVS ANIMÆ, ATQVE ANIMABVS OMNIVM FIDELIVM DEFVNCTORVM, ATQVE NOSTRIS ANIMABVS QVVM EX HAC LVCE TRANSIVERIMVS, PROPITIETVR DEVS.” Though no Catholic, I could not refuse to add a sincere Amen. 

How do we want to style this? Tricky because it's a direct quote... of an inscription... inside a letter.

I so appreciate your guidance!

Sid

[Vince]

Please provide links to where these occur in the source scans so I can see what they look like in context. Thanks!

On Nov 5, 2025, at 3:29 PM, Sidney Hirschman <sidneyh...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks. Two questions on outliers, which I hope (though do not expect!) will be the last for this one:

1. The book uses a few different foreign-language music phrases frequently; they all refer to a type of song/dance you'd play on the violin. In the original text, these are in quotes with the first letter capitalized:

• “Gagliarda”
• “Coranto”
• “Sarabanda”
• “Minuetto”

Now, these will be obviously be lowercase and w/o quotes according to the MoS, but I would be grateful for some guidance on italicization. "Coranto" is in Merriam-Webster as an alternate spelling of "courante," but the other three seem to be alternative spellings or foreign-language words not listed in MW (gagliarda = galliard, sarabanda = sarabande, minuetto = menuetto). 

Since combinations of these are frequently used in close proximity to each other, and considering that most people won't know what a "coranto" nor a "sarabanda" is, would it be strange if "coranto" were not in italics but the other three were?

Ex: They played the coranto and the sarabanda, and in the singular fascination of the music John had entirely forgotten the episode of the previous evening, when, as the bold air of the gagliarda commenced...

2. In the final note, the letter-writer describes the inscription of a grave:

At our feet was the great brass of one Sir Roger de Maltravers. I pointed out the end of the inscription to my companion⁠—“CVIVS ANIMÆ, ATQVE ANIMABVS OMNIVM FIDELIVM DEFVNCTORVM, ATQVE NOSTRIS ANIMABVS QVVM EX HAC LVCE TRANSIVERIMVS, PROPITIETVR DEVS.” Though no Catholic, I could not refuse to add a sincere Amen. 

How do we want to style this? Tricky because it's a direct quote... of a transcription... inside a letter.

[Sidney Hirschman]

Oh, of course.

Turns out that in the original scans the words are italicized instead of quoted, but my question stands. Gagliarda, Sarabanda, Minuetto, and Coranto can all be seen here: https://archive.org/details/cu31924031220118/page/n17/mode/2up

And the final inscription is here: https://archive.org/details/cu31924031220118/page/n249/mode/2up

[Vince]

Great, thanks.

For the musical words, they’re all Italian, of course, but all of them have English equivalents—coranto (or, as you note, courante), saraband, minuet, and galliard. However, most of them are not sound alike, so I don’t think we want to substitute any of them. I would tag them all as Italian, and as you note you can also lowercase them. The latter is editorial, the former isn’t, so it should be two separate commits. None of them need quotes.

You mention a letter for the inscription, but you don’t have any letter semantics on that chapter, and “Mr. Gaskell’s Note” is ambiguous in context, and the parts I skimmed didn’t show any indication of it being an actual letter, as opposed to just his own personal notes on the manuscript.

Regardless, that doesn’t impact how the inscription is handled—I would make it a blockquote, just as we usually do letters that are inline. The actual text should be changed to normal sentence case; the styling should be small-caps, not all-caps (we generally try to avoid all caps, see SEMoS 8.3.3), and since it is the entire blockquote, it should be done via CSS, not markup. Also note that we eliminate Latin ligatures (SEMoS 8.6), editorial.

[Sidney Hirschman]

Thanks, Vince! That's helpful.

For the cover image, I propose The Old Violin by William Michael Harnett, for obvious reasons: https://www.nga.gov/artworks/79531-old-violin

Which would look like this:

[Vince]

Looks good, I’ve uploaded to our art DB and assigned it to this project.

On Nov 12, 2025, at 2:02 PM, Sidney Hirschman <sidneyh...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Vince! That's helpful.

For the cover image, I propose The Old Violin by William Michael Harnett, for obvious reasons: https://www.nga.gov/artworks/79531-old-violin

Which would look like this: