[Next Project] The Wyvern Mystery by Sheridan Le Fanu

[Christopher Hapka]

My Yeats project is in a holding pattern until I can schedule another library visit. In the meantime I'd like to take a crack at this, probably Le Fanu's second best known novel after Uncle Silas.

Text at Project Gutenberg

Images at the Internet Archive

The images are from the same 1890 "yellowback" edition used for the PG text.

One question: this edition had a coloured cover, probably a woodblock print. You can see a full version here. Unlike the Hardy Boys covers we've been using, this wasn't part of the original 1869 printing--I'm assuming I should look for an alternate cover more in keeping with our house style?

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, that cover is not only not in our house style, but it's also bad.
The Hardy Boys are not *quite* in the house style but are close enough
considering they're a perfect subject match.

Robin can you manage this with Weijia reviewing?

On 4/12/24 3:00 AM, Christopher Hapka wrote:
> My Yeats project is in a holding pattern until I can schedule another
> library visit. In the meantime I'd like to take a crack at this,
> probably Le Fanu's second best known novel after Uncle Silas.
>

> Text at Project Gutenberg <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68569>

>
> Images at the Internet Archive

> <https://archive.org/details/13407350.2515.emory.edu/page/n7/mode/2up>

>
> The images are from the same 1890 "yellowback" edition used for the PG text.
>
> One question: this edition had a coloured cover, probably a woodblock
> print. You can see a full version here

> <https://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowbacks/16527889734>. Unlike the

> Hardy Boys covers we've been using, this wasn't part of the original
> 1869 printing--I'm assuming I should look for an alternate cover more in
> keeping with our house style?
>

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[Robin Whittleton]

Sure.

> On 12 Apr 2024, at 20:55, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:
>
> Yes, that cover is not only not in our house style, but it's also bad. The Hardy Boys are not *quite* in the house style but are close enough considering they're a perfect subject match.

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[Christopher Hapka]

Here's the repo: https://github.com/chapkachapka/j-sheridan-le-fanu_the-wyvern-mystery

[Weijia Cheng]

I can review.

[Christopher Hapka]

A question for this one. I have a passage in this book:

> “There was a woman in a <i>barooche</i>, I think they call it..."

My instinct is, probably change the italics to single quotes? Is there a general rule I'm missing for this kind of eye-dialect?

[Robin Whittleton]

Yep, given that barouche is in ME (I assume we’re referring to that?) then it’d be more normal to put this in quotes instead of italics as a purposeful misspelling. Editorial commit of course.

-Robin

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[Christopher Hapka]

One I wanted to check. The servants in this book say:

Yes 'm

a lot, which is set with a space and occasionally a comma between "yes" and "'m". My instinct is to leave this alone. This is not something we need to close up, like "we 'll"?

[Robin Whittleton]

I’m on the fence. I think David Grigg did something similar in a recentish production and committed it as [Editorial], but I can’t find it now. Google ngrams won’t let us search for “yes ’m” vs “yes’m” so no help there.

If you don’t feel it worth it then don’t do it I think.

-Robin

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[Christopher Hapka]

OK--I was on the fence too, but noticed that in some of them there was actually a comma, "Yes, 'm," which I think tips me over into "leave it alone."

[Christopher Hapka]

Next up: "grizzly."

"...said Mildred, with grizzly scorn."

"...the old woman took the candle again and sallied forth once more upon her grizzly expedition."

"...with her threadbare brown cloak, and her grizzly old bonnet..."

This is to my ear a sound-alike to the more modern "grisly," but I think the meaning is closer to "grizzly," used to describe something white-hared and by extension old, and it's used only to refer to the one elderly character, so my plan is to leave it. OK?

[Robin Whittleton]

Yeah, leave that. Although “grizzly” isn’t that common, “grizzled” is and is the same root.

On 14 May 2024, at 21:55, Christopher Hapka <ch...@hapka.com> wrote:

Next up: "grizzly."

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[Christopher Hapka]

Hopefully the last batch of issues on this one:

1. There is a Dutch character who is addressed a few times as "Vrau." The Dutch for "woman" or "wife" is "vrouw." Neither is in M-W abridged. Should I correct/modernize this to "Vrouw"? Or should I mark it as "nl" but leave it with Le Fanu's spelling?

2. There are a number of characters who speak in dialect that includes "a" before some verbs. Sometimes the text has this with a hyphen:

> Is there anything uncommon a- happenin'?

Sometimes it doesn't:

> Here's Master Charles a comin'

Should I standardize this? My instinct is, modern usage is always to use the hyphen, and I don't see any kind of consistent distinction between the way Le Fanu uses the two forms.

3. Similarly, "would" in dialect is often given as apostrope-d, as in

> the lady ’d like a cup o’ tea

but in one spot he uses "id" instead:

> ...the lords and ladies id come ridin' down...

Is this worth standardizing or should I just leave it as written?

4. Chapter 57 begins: "In order to throwing a light upon the nature of [this], we must..." My instinct is to correct this to "throw", I can't see any way the current way makes sense.

5. Similarly, there's a line of dialogue: “There’s sharp fellows poachers round there, I’m told,” which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I'm not 100% sure how to fix it.

6. There are two occurrences of "perrywig," both in a nonsense-song ("Tag-rag-merry-derry-perrywig"). I'm inclined to leave them along rather than "modernize" to periwig, given that it's basically phonetic nonsense.

[Robin Whittleton]

1. I think this could be a reasonable candidate for modernisation. I don’t know enough Dutch to know if Vrau is period correct?

2. Yep, you can normalise this with an [Editorial] commit.

3. Leave that as written, it sounds dialectal.

4. Is this something that’s corrected in later editions?

5. I’d leave that. If you mentally put a comma after fellows it makes more sense.

6. Yeah, leave them: it’s an obvious rhyme in the example you gave.

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[Bob Reus]

On Monday, June 10, 2024 at 2:47:51 AM UTC+8 robin wrote:

1. I think this could be a reasonable candidate for modernisation. I don’t know enough Dutch to know if Vrau is period correct?

I've never encountered this spelling in the Dutch books from the 1800s that I read. A couple of searches on dbnl.org (digitized Dutch books) suggest that the spelling vrau or vrauw was used in the 1300-1700s. Any occurences in later publications are cited from older works or of Flemish origin.

[Alex Cabal]

This looks like a clear sound-alike modernization we can make

On 6/9/24 7:35 PM, Bob Reus wrote:
> On Monday, June 10, 2024 at 2:47:51 AM UTC+8 robin wrote:
>
> 1. I think this could be a reasonable candidate for modernisation. I
> don’t know enough Dutch to know if Vrau is period correct?
>
>
> I've never encountered this spelling in the Dutch books from the 1800s
> that I read. A couple of searches on dbnl.org (digitized Dutch books)

> suggest that the spelling /vrau/ or /vrauw/ was used in the 1300-1700s.

>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/94e4b324-97e5-4f90-91e1-d01bb803572cn%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/94e4b324-97e5-4f90-91e1-d01bb803572cn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

>
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[Christopher Hapka]

1. I've kept digging and it looks like "Vrau" was a common spelling in literature of the period, although mostly for German characters, as a phonetic spelling of "Frau"--George Sand used it, for instance. It also seems closely enough associated with the book that the character in a recent film version was credited as just "Vrau." Overall I'm leaning towards leaving it alone at this point. What do you think? There are four occurrences, so it isn't a major change either way--Vrau or Vrouw.

4. There are not a lot of modern editions of this book online. It appears as ""In order to throwing a light upon" in both early editions. I did find one 2012 Dover edition that does seem to have made the correction I suggested but not much other evidence either way.

[Christopher Hapka]

Also, a proposed cover for this project. CC0 at Yale British Art. The book takes place mainly at Wyvern, a dilapidated country house.

[Robin Whittleton]

1. Keep it as Vrau then, I think.

4. Having read the sentence a few times I can’t find a way for it to make grammatical sense as written, and it’s not speech so can’t be dialectal. Let’s change it with an [Editorial] commit.

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[Robin Whittleton]

Looks good! I’ll add it to the artworks DB.

-Robin

On 11 Jun 2024, at 21:22, Christopher Hapka <ch...@hapka.com> wrote:

Also, a proposed cover for this project. CC0 at Yale British Art. The book takes place mainly at Wyvern, a dilapidated country house.

<wyvern.png>

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<wyvern.png>

[Christopher Hapka]

Okay; this one is about ready to go; just one last question.

In the long description I reference a short story, "Green Tea." Because it's a short story I quoted it, and then I linked it to the collection (In a Glass Darkly) it appears in at SE. lint complains that it isn't italicised--can I add an ignore for this or should I not link it?

[Robin Whittleton]

I cloned your repo and ran lint against it to see what error you’re getting, but I’m not seeing any problems. What’s the listed error?

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[Christopher Hapka]

I was originally getting:

│ m-064 │ Error    │ content.opf │ S.E. ebook hyperlinked in long description but not italicized.                                                                                                         

Since you weren't seeing it, I checked my tools version and upgraded from 2.6.3 to 2.6.4, and once I did that the error disappeared.

With that managed, this one is ready for review!

[Weijia Cheng]

Alright, I am a little under the weather so I may not get to immediately but I will review soon.

[Weijia Cheng]

Was feeling better so I was able to complete the review today.

[Weijia Cheng]

Alex, this is ready for you from my version of the repository: https://github.com/weijia-cheng/j-sheridan-le-fanu_the-wyvern-mystery

[Alex Cabal]

Looks good, I've gone ahead and released it, thanks!

>> <https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/j-sheridan-le-fanu/in-a-glass-darkly>) it appears in at SE. lint complains that it isn't italicised--can I add an ignore for this or should I not link it?

>>
>> On Tuesday 11 June 2024 at 20:48:34 UTC+1 robin wrote:
>>
>> Looks good! I’ll add it to the artworks DB.
>>
>> -Robin
>>
>>> On 11 Jun 2024, at 21:22, Christopher Hapka
>>> <ch...@hapka.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Also, a proposed cover for this project. CC0 at
>>> Yale British Art

>>> <https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1219>. The book takes place mainly at Wyvern, a dilapidated country house.

>>>
>>> <wyvern.png>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>> group.
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>>> emails from it, send an email to
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>>> <wyvern.png>
>>
>>
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