Eight Massive Online Troves of Great Reading Material

The following list of online resources to out-of-print texts and other literary materials is nicked from a New York Magazine article by Kathryn Schultz, "11 Lost Literary Classics You Can Download for Free."  Because she included The Education of Henry Adams (1907) and Louisa May Alcott's sensational novel, Behind a Mask Or A Woman's Power (1866) as part of her strong list she wins the Award for Today.

Because Schultz further provided dates of publication for them all, she wins the Award for Tomorrow too.

Then she wins the Award for the Week because, at the end, Schultz appended this list: Eight Massive Online Troves of Great Reading Material.

Thanks to digitization, readers can access literary material we could never have gotten our hands on in the past—because it was expensive, rare, remote, uncollected, impossible to find, or because of a literal prohibition against putting one’s hands on them. Herewith, a tiny sample of this literary abundance, from illuminated manuscripts to Darwin's 15,000 letters.

1. The Digital Scriptorium 
 An online collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts from all over the world. Short of breaking into a museum, there’s no better way to view those manuscripts than digitally, since you can zoom in to appreciate the details.

2. The World Digital Library
 My favorite “Surprise me”–style book resource. Sure, you can search it, but you can also click the timeline (8000 B.C. to today), click the globe, and kiss your workday good-bye. Where else will you stumble on a gorgeous illustrated edition of a turn-of-the-last-century Guide to the Great Siberian Railway?

3. Project Gutenberg’s Pirates, Buccaneers, Corsairs, Etc. Bookshelf
 Many people have a passing familiarity with Project Gutenberg and its 42,000+ free books; fewer know that you can search it by “bookshelf.” This pirate-y one is my personal favorite, but there are scores of others for browsing everything from detective fiction to erotica.

4. The Emily Dickinson Electronic Archives
 The Internet is chockablock with thoroughgoing websites for dead authors, from Beatrix Potter to Franz Kafka. This addition includes vast amounts of Dickinsoniana, including scans of all her extant manuscripts.

5. The Public Domain Review
 The old problem with old books was how to find them. The new problem with old books is Whoa, where to start? The Public Domain Review organizes and highlights interesting out-of-copyright works—of all kinds, but its literary collection is excellent.

6. The Darwin Correspondence Project
 Writers gonna write, and their letters to, from, and about each other abound on the web. My favorite batch comes from Darwin, who corresponded with everyone from fellow naturalists to his kids. This site contains the full text of 7,500 of his letters and information on 7,500 more.

7. The Digital Public Library of America
 Among the newest and most ambitious open-access projects, this one aims to make every offering in our nation’s public libraries, archives, and museums freely available online. Its bookshelf contains 1.5 million volumes and counting.

8. The Poetry Archive Historic Recordings
“Into the valley of death rrrrrooooooooode the 600”: To truly appreciate “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” you must hear Tennyson himself bellow it—as he did, into a wax cylinder, in 1890. That recording and those of 49 other poets are free on this site.

*This article originally appeared in the November 18, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.

Went With Da Wind! Cue the Sound Track

Things we watch when we are too sick to do anything at all.*

In honor of Margaret Mitchell's 113th birthday on November 8th, 1900, we bring you ... Da Dah Da DAH! Carol Burnett as Miz Scarlett and Da Dah Da DAH EVEN BETTER IF THAT IS POSSIBLE! Dinah Shore as Miz Melody.**

Part One:

Second part picks up here -- be sure to catch the dress:

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*  My ribs hurt from coughing so much. It feels as though I have broken a couple -- which, I have not, of course.  The rest of me is just as much a misery.  Watching these Carol Burnett satires of Gone With the Wind still made me laugh, which then made me hurt and cough more, which made me hurt more.  Laughing, however, was worth it.

**  The names have been changed slightly.  I can't hear well enough with this cold muffling over my audio receptors, so I can't tell if it's really Miz Tartlett or just my own wishes.

The 11 Nations of North America

In Tufts Magazine, "Up in Arms" by Colin Woodward:

author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. An earlier book, The Republic of Pirates,

is the basis of the forthcoming NBC drama Crossbones.

I don't entirely agree with where he makes the contrast between Chesapeake and Deep South, but he's still right.

This is demographic history, now a foundation tool for researching any history, it seems (it even matters when assessing armies -- from where do the rank-and-file come? who are they?  who are the officers?).  It certainly is for the study of slavery.  El V was at many panels about these matters the last three days at the Demographic Conference at Michigan State University.

In Woodward's article he's employing demographics to explore the historical frequency of gun violence in various sections of the U.S.

In any case, this article is an excellent illustration of the truth which is chronology and geography are the twin pillars on which history is built.

History To Warm the Bones In the Cold and Gloom

The Weather They Sayers tell us though we're cold and dark now, very soon it shall be colder and darker, and maybe snowflakes. And I'm sick, which is not helping. That I spent 3 hours walking around with a friend in the wind and the cold yesterday probably did this to me. But I was enjoying being with her so much and walking around, I didn't even notice.  Last night I couldn't sleep for chills and sneezing and coughing, and my skin feeling too small. Thus it is great that el V's away because he wouldn't be able to sleep either, with all my tossing, turning, coughing, sneezing etc. Hopefully by tomorrow night when he gets back the worst of the symptoms will have abated.

In the meantime I've been reading in William Henry Seward's life and papers. There's an additional benefit to digging into Seward, which is learning more about the intricacies of New York state politics.  Seward was a politician from his very early 20's so this covers a lot of decades, including those decades of one odd political party after another sprouting to then disappear: Anti-Masons, Know Nothings -- o there were so many, and for every one of them,  New York state threw up voters who liked them.  Then, as now, New York state was a crazy quilt of competing regions with their own interests and objectives.  So yes, Seward, with the never-to-be-underestimated tutelage and sponsorship of Thurlow Weed, who, unlike Seward, was born impoverished and really did rise by his own efforts to dominate the New York political system.

Seward's other fascination is how he grows politically and socially throughout his career.  This is what strikes me about so many of the figures from what we can loosely call the North, who began taking our national center stage in the later 1840's and in 1850. They evolve.

Francis Adeline Miller Seward

Her father, Judge Elijah Miller, gave Seward permission to marry his daughter on the condition they live with him and his wife in their Auburn, New York mansion, amply staffed with servants

They are generally very close to their wives. They constantly talk to their wives and, when separated, write to their wives. The content of their conversations and letters go far beyond domestic matters.  They discuss deeply with their wives politics, issues, ways and means.  Often it is their wives' influence that convince these men who are very effective at creating political careers for themselves* that slavery is even more a moral issue than a political one of representation in the House and Senate and control of the White House. Many of them, like Seward, are not only anti-slavery, but they are early supporters of women's rights and particularly the right of women to vote.

You do not see any of this among southern politicians, even those whose wives are politically ambitious on behalf of their husbands, and very loyal, like Varina Davis.  Jefferson Davis, though he wrote to her, their matters of discussion were almost entirely domestic.  In other matters, there was no discussion at all. Jefferson Davis would would announce he was going to be away for a year in service of his career, and she was to take care of the plantation -- under the supervision of his brother.  Then they would fight about it all year because Varina hated him being away and she and her brother-in-law were rivals for Jefferson's attention.** Sometimes Jefferson would just stop writing to her, or she to him, or both to each other. The early years of their marriage were rocky, followed by more brief rocky periods -- and became so again for a while, late in life when Sarah Ellis Dorsey, a wealthy, and beautiful widow became his patron, willing him outright her Biloxi plantation, Beauvoir -- much to the disquiet of her relatives.

I've also been reading William Dalrymple's latest book, Return Of A King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839 - 42 (2013).  It's a cognitive exercise to wrench one's mind from the 1840's of the United States to the 1840's of the British Empire in India, Afghanistan and surrounding region. -- when the Great Game gets going, at least according to Peter Hopkirk.  Others have come around to thinking in terms of "the Great Game" is more useful to fiction than it is to historians.  Dalrymple isn't much interested in the concept as a concept.  He's interested in the failure of the East India Company and how it pulled British military and political failures in the region along with its own financial and administrative failures. This one does not have the snap and sizzle, the page-turning impetus, as his previous books,

particularly his splendid The White Mughals (2002).

When I finish with Seward I'm going to move on to a biography of Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (1997) who is a less likable figure than Seward.  However, the biography's author is the great Robert Remini, who owns the Jacksonian era.  As the scope of what he knows is so vast by the time he got around to writing separate works on John Q Adams, Webster and Clay, he is relaxed and sometime is very funny  -- on purpose, so I'm looking forward to that.

These are what help me forget how very very very very rotten I feel.

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*   Seward served variously as Senator in the New York legislature, Governor of New York, United States Senator from New York, and United States Secretary of State.

** The Polks (Tennessee and Mississippi) are an exception. They were a very close couple, who equally loved slavery and despised slaves, and were united in their ambition to get rich via slavery.  But they had no children, and maybe never even had sex due to an operation for urinary stones Polk suffered when very young, that seems to have left him both sterile and impotent -- or so his biographers seem to mostly agree.

Weather, Friends, Nashville, The Good Wife

Such weather whiplash we have, snapping from below freezing at night to suddenly 70 degrees two days later, than back down into the low 50's as daytime high, back up to mid-60's.  Consequently I seem to have acquired another small cold.  Bah.

To make up for it two dear friends are here -- well, one was here, and she's left again; the other is coming in this afternoon.  But it's kinda rainy, windy and cool, not what she was hoping it would be here.  It would be good if we got real rain. We're about to fall into official drought condition.  There's been no rain all autumn.  But whatever water falls out of the sky today -- if any at all -- it's not expected to be much.

There was no Nashville last night!   No Nashville until the 13th!  Woe is I. Nashville and

The Good Wife are my primary escape viewing, escape from the constant politiking that isn't really about doing anything no matter who They are.

That we are so likely to be compelled into years of Clinton & Christie blather is too grim to contemplate.

Trust me.  Anyone who thinks Christie is a moderate hasn't lived in this neck of the woods for decades. Christie is a frackin' bully. Anyone who thinks he's a moderate doesn't live here, and watched him for years. He's another flavor of Giuilani, who also thought he could ride a phoney rep for effectiveness on 9/11 to the oval office.* Christie's the sort who takes a helicopter to his son's soccer game and charges it to the taxpayers, then lies about it, who hates gay marriage and women's rights, and who intensely dislikes unions, fair wages and the poor. He's entirely out of that ancient Southern slaveholding outpost of New Jersey that is bigoted, racist and white supremacist.

Clinton?  She long ago sold her soul to the Bloated Corporate Global Oligarchy.

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* Stupid Giuiliani was the one who refused to listen to any expert advice in the matter and forced the City's Emergency War Room be put in a sub basement of the Towers, where, then, it wasn't available when the emergency happened.

Another Election Day

First, getting el V off to the airport was running late, due his inability to tear himself away from computer screen and e-mails.  

I made and have eaten the breakfast I'd intended to make for him.

I'll have my usual breakfast of yogurt and fruit for dinner, I guess.

It's warmer and less humid today, so I don't hurt as much as I did the last two decidedly cold days. Sunny too, and without wind.

I voted.  The polling place, for my district only, was quite busy.  The other districts had hardly anyone coming in.  So I had to wait in a longish line, while the other districts' election workers had nothing whatsoever to do.  As well, this time around we had to use the scanner machines.  For the primary the scanners had been jettisoned due to so much trouble in the last election and they'd resurrected the old mechanical machines. Things moved a lot faster with those old machines than with these digital scanners. Also the paper part of the process, the ballot itself, has such very small fonts, they are hard to read.  I hope all the voters realized the back of the ballot had issues to vote upon.  I'm not sure I would have realized it myself if I hadn't listened to a discussion about these matters yesterday on one of our public radio talk shows.

It's currently being reported that the digital scanners are having a lot of problems in various districts -- mostly in Brooklyn.  Even in my place, some of the machines didn't have working lights, which means you would not be able to see the ballot to fill in those little ovals.

In the meantime Rand Paul wishes to kill Rachel Maddow in a duel because she outed his plagerism.

I was wondering when out-and-out dueling would be back in totally armed all the time in all the places America filled with crazies who hate-hate-hate and will never ever allow that anyone anywhere anytime is allowed to disagree with ME! Or be allowed to provide the proof to the public that I am an ignorant lying piece of shyte.  Because I'm a right-wing crazy you cannot call me on my lying right wing craziness but I am utterly entitled to voice my desire to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime I so choose, particularly women.

As to be expected RP's telling the country to get ready for Nullification, which was the first big plank in secession, which John C. Calhoun, tried to pull off in 1832 -- except Andy Jackson kicked his ass and said, "No you don't."*

From Politico:

“Jefferson obviously was a clear leader on the principle of nullification,” the former Texas congressman said of the third president. “I’ve been working on the assumption that nullification is going to come. It’s going to be a de facto nullification. It’s ugly, but pretty soon things are going to get so bad that we’re just going to ignore the feds and live our own lives in our own states.”

So much are we resembling the run-up to the Civil War.

How many of us are aware the first time that equating a desire for civil rights with being a communist happened already in 1850's by the slaveholders?  It was common to hear the fire-eaters in the Congress and Senate, like Robert Barnwell Rhett,**  to howl on the floor that abolitionists were communists and traitors and should be imprisoned, or better yet, shot.

He bought the Charleston Mercury for his son. The Charleston Mercury functioned for the slaveholding power elite secessionists for years and years like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News have been doing for years and years, drumbeating the horrors of government and negroes and northerners (even though they kept sending their sons up north for education) and glories glorious glories of slavery for slaves.

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*    I have not yet been able to determine whether or not it is apocryphal that on his death bed, Andrew Jackson expressed as one of his last wishes, "I wish I'd hung that son-of-a-bitch Calhoun when I had the chance."

** Think of this family name of Rhett the next time a glowing defense of Gone With the Wind comes up. Think also of this family: 

Butler's drunken, gambling ways caused the largest single slave sale ever.  It was so huge it got its own name within the African American community, The Weeping Time.  It's still remembered today. His wife, the great Shakespearian interpretor, Frances Kemble, divorced him because of slavery, which reasons included his personal contribution to the natural increase of his property.

What's Up? Michigan, William Seward and Free Soil

El V arrived home safely.

Get ready, Michigan,  here he comes!

At Western Michigan University:

Tuesday, November 5  U.S. Election Day
Literary reading  - excerpts from ""The American Slave Coast, Ned Sublette, 2028 Brown Hall, 7 to 9 p.m. Free.

Among other activities el V will be playing the Old Dog in Kalamazoo November 9th as part of the WMU Music Therapy Showcase and Fundraiser Applying their talents and raising money for class trip to New York / Chicago. Rock / pop. Cover charge: $5

After that is East Lansing for the Atlantic World Slave Database conference, where there are going to be world-class demographers, including Gwendolyn Midlo Hall.

There is also a tour of Detroit during this visit to Michigan.

I am studying William Seward.

Perhaps all the figures who took over the national stage at the period of the Great Compromise of 1850, aren't as entirely fascinating as so many of those who dominated it between the War of 1812 and 1850. For one thing, among them there aren't Great Monsters such as Calhoun and Jackson. Nor is 5' 4''  Stephen A. Douglas any match for the towering stature of Henry Clay.

Nevertheless I am fascinated with them.  It's in their personal and political lives we see the vast political change overtake the nation, that ends the decades of Jacksonian proslavery, anti-bank, anti-government dominance.

The poor white southerner -- poor, thus excluded from running for political office in most slavery states even at a local level -- these southern Jacksonian Democrats see the Democrats with their intractable demands that slavery be expanded into all the public, government lands, as personal obstacles to their ever getting ahead.

These Are Martin Van Buren and Charles Adams - Yes! the grandson of John Adams - on the Free Soil Ticket

Thus they become a bridge between North and South Free Soil movement and the short-lived Free Soil party, which morphed into the Republican party, that rang the death knell for the Democrats in the country outside the slaveholding states. In this case they mean literally free soil, available from the government lands for nominal prices. By this point all the lands suitable for agriculture in the South are in the hands of the ever shrinking numbers of the huge slaveowning power elite, as they alone have the credit to take over failed plantations, make loans and buy ever more negroes at ever higher prices.

Just because we've finished writing The American Slave Coast, doesn't mean we've finished studying.  Or writing, for that matter.  :)  What a wonderful privilege this has been, to live so immersed in our history.  I'm so glad I get to continue doing it until publication. Then there will be the year of promoting it.