Edition of Smith’s Ethelinde begun

The novel opens with Sir Edward’s return to Grasmere Abbey, Cumberland: the photo is of Grasmere today

Dear friends and readers,

I hope short blogs about my progress on my edition for Valancourt of an edition of Ethelinde will be acceptable. As I make each step, go through the stages, and (I hope) complete my task so as to be acceptable to Valancourt, I’ll make blogs about my progress. I can work ideas out, ask for help, express frustration and any grief or satisfactions I have.

I also agreed to write a review of the fifth volume of the new (super-expensive but excellent) editions of Fanny Burney’s papers, this one 1783-83: The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney: Volume V, 1782-1783, ed. Lars Troide and Stewart Cooke. It contains the years she published Cecilia, her thwarted love for Owen Cambridge (he just turned away because she was not highly connected or rich enough for his ambition), and is tremendously vivid — as are all her early journals. I am to review it as an edition as well as the content. That means I should read at least one other of the early journals and dip into the later ones and look back on older ones. The volume in question is itself over 500 pages. I felt I had to start the Ethelinde now so as to do both within the time I’ve been given.

So, today I began my scanning and typing and reading Ethelinde. I had only an hour to work but I am planning to work half an hour a day to one hour regularly so it was a trial run that way too. The first thing to ascertain was whether the 1790 text I have can be scanned so as to need only a minimum of typing: correcting and occasional lines typed, as well as all long “s’s. This is what I did in French for Sophie Cottin’s Amelie Mansfield.

Reader, it is doable. The scan came out legible. I have to go over all the lines and do a bit of hitting tabs, or typing for each as I read along (mostly the long “s’s), but it’s not every word, not from scratch the way I did Isabelle de Montolieu’s Caroline de Lichtfield. And there are no French accents.

The procedure differs from an e-text edition, for then I had to type in html tags and set up each page to put on the Net, and I put the page numbers of the original early 19th century editions into the text. This one I’m putting onto OpenOffice.Org documents, one per each volume, with no page numbers except the ones at the bottom for the reader of the copy (which will become the ones for the reader of the eventual printed book). Again easier.

I had to struggle to work out what to click on in the program, what instructions to hit, but after 10 minutes, with Jim’s help, I managed it. As I type along I will make notes of each item that might need explanation. If I can do this, who knows maybe I’ll return to George Anne Bellamy’s Autobiography: Chatto and Windus did not print her 6 volume autobiography, but the two volume abridgement by someone else. The only way you can read the 6 volumes is have access to ECCO and many people do not (and may not have a good-natured enough friend to send the text in 12 attachments — that’s what it takes).

I just managed the first three pages, but I did begin.

Ulswater in Cumberland today

Oh how I long to go to the Lake District as well as Cornwall.
See Lake District longings.

Ellen