The Roman Hat Mystery

[Vince]

I just have to finish the descriptions for the last two entries for Scenes from Provincial Life in the Comédie (and get cover art approval from Emma), so I’m going to take a short break again before starting on Scenes from Paris. I’d like to do the first Ellery Queen, which became PD this year. Repository here.

And, in what may be a first, I have a candidate for cover art before starting. The “hat” in the title refers to a top hat, and I thought this looked appropriate, PD proof here. The novel is dated 30-35 years after the painting, but I don’t believe much if anything changed about formal wear in the intervening years.

A couple of questions:

1. Everything about the book is fictional—there’s a foreword by a fictional character that also has footnotes attributed to him, there’s a fictional editor who has at least one footnote attributed to him, etc. Do I need to create metadata entries for them, even though they’re fictional? If so, great, I’ll do that, but if not, who do the metadata roles for foreword and endnotes go to instead?
2. There is a “Lexicon of Persons Connected with the Investigation,” i.e. a dramatis personae, which is a hallmark of most of the Queen mysteries. I remember this coming up recently—the z3998 entry is in the drama category, so we don’t use it for non-drama, but I don’t believe I ever saw what we should use instead.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Robin will manage this with Lukas reviewing.

On 7/2/25 11:30 PM, Vince wrote:
> I just have to finish the descriptions for the last two entries for
> Scenes from Provincial Life in the Comédie (and get cover art approval
> from Emma), so I’m going to take a short break again before starting on
> Scenes from Paris. I’d like to do the first Ellery Queen, which became

> PD this year. Repository here <https://github.com/vr8hub/ellery-
> queen_the-roman-hat-mystery>.

>
> And, in what may be a first, I have a candidate for cover art before
> starting. The “hat” in the title refers to a top hat, and I thought this

> looked appropriate, PD proof here <https://www.metmuseum.org/art/
> collection/search/437835>. The novel is dated 30-35 years after the

> painting, but I don’t believe much if anything changed about formal wear
> in the intervening years.
>
> A couple of questions:
>

> 1. Everything about the book is fictional—there’s a foreword by a

> fictional character that also has footnotes attributed to him,
> there’s a fictional editor who has at least one footnote attributed
> to him, etc. Do I need to create metadata entries for them, even
> though they’re fictional? If so, great, I’ll do that, but if not,
> who do the metadata roles for foreword and endnotes go to instead?

> 2. There is a “Lexicon of Persons Connected with the Investigation,”

> i.e. a dramatis personae, which is a hallmark of most of the Queen
> mysteries. I remember this coming up recently—the z3998 entry is in
> the drama category, so we don’t use it for non-drama, but I don’t
> believe I ever saw what we should use instead.
>
>

> PastedGraphic-1.png
>
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[David]

I hate to be a pain, but isn't that cover already in use by a George Bernard Shaw play?

https://standardebooks.org/artworks/henri-de-toulouse-latrec/the-englishman-at-the-moulin-rouge

D.

[Vince Rice]

Sigh. Yes, yes it is. That’s very … disappointing. Irritating. All the things.

On Jul 3, 2025, at 1:48 PM, David <djre...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Alex Cabal]

Should be plenty of top hat portraits out there though

On 7/3/25 1:54 PM, Vince Rice wrote:
> Sigh. Yes, yes it is. That’s very … disappointing. Irritating. All the
> things.
>
>> On Jul 3, 2025, at 1:48 PM, David <djre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 
>> I hate to be a pain, but isn't that cover already in use by a George

>> Bernard Shaw play <https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-bernard-
>> shaw/mrs-warrens-profession>?
>> https://standardebooks.org/artworks/henri-de-toulouse-latrec/the-
>> englishman-at-the-moulin-rouge

>
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[David]

And on a cheerier note, just to say regarding Q1 — something like that was also the case for Mark Rutherford's Deliverance. "Mark Rutherford" is a pseudonym for William Hale White, and he had the book putatively edited by the fictional Reuben Shapcott. Only Mark Rutherford got metadata, though.

FWIW!

On Thursday, 3 July 2025 at 05:31:07 UTC+1 Vince wrote:

. . .

[Vince]

On Jul 3, 2025, at 1:55 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:

Should be plenty of top hat portraits out there though

You would think so, but I’ve thought that before and had it not be true. And I was looking forward to not having to do a cover search. Oh well…

On Jul 3, 2025, at 2:18 PM, David <djre...@gmail.com> wrote:

And on a cheerier note, just to say regarding Q1 — something like that was also the case for Mark Rutherford's Deliverance. "Mark Rutherford" is a pseudonym for William Hale White, and he had the book putatively edited by the fictional Reuben Shapcott. Only Mark Rutherford got metadata, though.

Yes, but he didn’t have endnotes attributed to him, and therefore no reason to get metadata. That’s not the case here. Both of the fictional parties here have content that would normally get a role in the metdata, so if they don’t get one, then the roles have to be assigned to someone else. Who? The author? I believe that is technically correct, i.e. “Ellery Queen” wrote all of it (although even Ellery Queen is a pseudonym), but I don’t know if that’s how we want the metadata handled.

[Alex Cabal]

On 7/3/25 2:51 PM, Vince wrote:
> Yes, but he didn’t have endnotes attributed to him, and therefore no
> reason to get metadata. That’s not the case here. Both of the fictional
> parties here have content that would normally get a role in the metdata,

> so if they /don’t/ get one, then the roles have to be assigned to

> someone else. Who? The author? I believe that is technically correct,
> i.e. “Ellery Queen” wrote all of it (although even Ellery Queen is a
> pseudonym), but I don’t know if that’s how we want the metadata handled.

For metadata purposes we're concerned with the real author (or their pen
name) so it will be Ellery Queen. Metadata is largely for facilitating
searches, so imagine if someone where to search a catalog for Ellery
Queen - we would expect this book to show up under that name, not the
fictional author's.

[Vince]

I agree, but the question isn’t about the author, it's about the fictional names on the forward/endnotes, etc. In that case, if someone sees one of those names, would they expect to be able to search on it? Maybe, maybe not. Hence the question.

[Alex Cabal]

No, metadata searches are usually not conducted for fictional
characters. We are only concerned with real contributors.

[Vince]

Very good, I’ll assign both of those roles to the author.

[Vince]

OK, Robin, let’s try this again. It’s another Toulouse-Lautrec, PD proof here. It does not appear in our artwork database.

[Robin Whittleton]

Looks good, added and assigned at https://standardebooks.org/artworks/henri-de-toulouse-lautrec/maxime-dethomas

On 5 Jul 2025, at 02:39, Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org> wrote:

OK, Robin, let’s try this again. It’s another Toulouse-Lautrec, PD proof here. It does not appear in our artwork database.

<PastedGraphic-1.png>

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[Vince]

Some characters refer to one of the Queens as “Q,” no period. For example, from here:

I’m tagging the Q as a surname abbreviation, even though it doesn’t have a period. There are multiple instances of this.

Then we have this example, from here:

We would normally include the period in the abbr tag, and also tag it as class=“eoc”. But given the above, the period here is not part of the abbreviation, it's only a period. So I’m tagging the Q by itself as with the first example, and leaving the period out of the tag and it’s just a normal period, i.e.

… must be a wizard, <abbr class=“z3998:surname”>Q</abbr>. How did he…

Let me know if any of that isn’t correct.

[Robin Whittleton]

Given 8.10.4, I think we should probably add the period? https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.2/single-page#8.10.4

On 9 Jul 2025, at 07:24, Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org> wrote:

Some characters refer to one of the Queens as “Q,” no period. For example, from here:

<PastedGraphic-1.png>

I’m tagging the Q as a surname abbreviation, even though it doesn’t have a period. There are multiple instances of this.

Then we have this example, from here:

<PastedGraphic-2.png>

We would normally include the period in the abbr tag, and also tag it as class=“eoc”. But given the above, the period here is not part of the abbreviation, it's only a period. So I’m tagging the Q by itself as with the first example, and leaving the period out of the tag and it’s just a normal period, i.e.

… must be a wizard, <abbr class=“z3998:surname”>Q</abbr>. How did he…

Let me know if any of that isn’t correct.

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[Vince]

Well, I certainly can; the use without feels intentional and less formal than with, but that’s probably just me. We also have multiple instances in the corpus already, but I of all people know SEMoS overrules the corpus. :)

Will do.

[David]

Unless "Q" be regarded as a hypocoristic (or a sort of nick-name) rather than abbreviation?

Something like that was the case in one of my productions, where "Q" appears as a character: “An agent of mine who is a living interrogation point; so we call him Q, which is short for query.” Only ever referred to in the book as "Q", sans punctuation, and it would feel like it goes against the spirit of the book/character to introduce an explicit abbreviation. It is more like a moniker in its own right. (IMO, obviously.)

(Not sure which is the "cat" and which the "pigeons" here........)

[Vince]

I believe this is finally ready for review, Lukas.

[Lukas Bystricky]

Sounds good. I'll get to this in the next day or so.

On Fri, Aug 8, 2025, 20:19 Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org> wrote:

I believe this is finally ready for review, Lukas.

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[Lukas Bystricky]

Very nice work as always Vince. I've opened a few things for you to look at. 

[Lukas Bystricky]

Alex, this is ready for you.

[Alex Cabal]

Looks good, I've released it, thanks!

I changed the semantics of the intro to dramatis-personae which is what
I think it is. That also removes one of the lint ignore entries.

On 8/10/25 11:12 AM, Lukas Bystricky wrote:
> Alex, this is ready for you.
>
> On Saturday, August 9, 2025 at 11:33:05 AM UTC+2 Lukas Bystricky wrote:
>
> Very nice work as always Vince. I've opened a few things for you to
> look at.
>
> On Friday, August 8, 2025 at 10:05:32 PM UTC+2 Lukas Bystricky wrote:
>
> Sounds good. I'll get to this in the next day or so.
>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2025, 20:19 Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org> wrote:
>

> I believe this <https://github.com/vr8hub/ellery-queen_the-
> roman-hat-mystery> is finally ready for review, Lukas.

>
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[Vince]

Oh, that is what it is, but there was discussion fairly recently on the list about using it for non-drama (I don’t believe you were a part of the discussion), and the conclusion drawn was that it should not be. I think the reasoning was the same as that for the various letter semantics—dramatis personae is in the “drama” section of the vocabulary, and therefore should only be used for drama.

But if it’s OK to use that semantic outside of its “jurisdiction," then I agree it’s the appropriate semantic. That does bring up another question, though—is it acceptable to not follow our dramatis personae formatting (CSS, etc.) for non-dramatic works? I didn’t, obviously, just wondering if OK in the general case.

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, I think they should all have the standard CSS I went ahead and
added it.

Dramatis personae can occur outside of plays, like it does here. I'm
fairly certain other non-drama books in the corpus also have dramatis
personae but nothing specific jumps to mind right now.

On 8/11/25 3:48 PM, Vince wrote:
> Oh, that /is/ what it is, but there was discussion fairly recently on

> the list about using it for non-drama (I don’t believe you were a part
> of the discussion), and the conclusion drawn was that it should not be.
> I think the reasoning was the same as that for the various letter
> semantics—dramatis personae is in the “drama” section of the vocabulary,
> and therefore should only be used for drama.
>
> But if it’s OK to use that semantic outside of its “jurisdiction," then
> I agree it’s the appropriate semantic. That does bring up another

> question, though—is it acceptable to /not/ follow our dramatis personae

> formatting (CSS, etc.) for non-dramatic works? I didn’t, obviously, just
> wondering if OK in the general case.
>
>
>> On Aug 11, 2025, at 2:03 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:
>>
>> Looks good, I've released it, thanks!
>>
>> I changed the semantics of the intro to dramatis-personae which is
>> what I think it is. That also removes one of the lint ignore entries.
>>
>>
>> On 8/10/25 11:12 AM, Lukas Bystricky wrote:
>>> Alex, this is ready for you.
>>> On Saturday, August 9, 2025 at 11:33:05 AM UTC+2 Lukas Bystricky wrote:
>>>    Very nice work as always Vince. I've opened a few things for you to
>>>    look at.
>>>    On Friday, August 8, 2025 at 10:05:32 PM UTC+2 Lukas Bystricky wrote:
>>>        Sounds good. I'll get to this in the next day or so.
>>>        On Fri, Aug 8, 2025, 20:19 Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org> wrote:
>>>            I believe this <https://github.com/vr8hub/ellery-queen_the-
>>>            roman-hat-mystery> is finally ready for review, Lukas.
>

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[Vince]

Great, good to know for the future. Most of the Queen novels have one, and when Ngaio Marsh’s finally start hitting PD, most of hers do, too.

[Vince]

Gudrun was the production that was being discussed a few months ago with regard to this. It has a "Names of Persons” and a “Names of Places." I was mistaken, you were a part of the conversation, and said call them Introductions, which is why I did so here. (I remembered the end result was Introductions, I didn’t remember you were the one who said it.)