Flowers Become Human

I discovered an interesting public domain book, called Flowers Personified.
It's an illustrated story about flowers taking on human form.
It is easy to find information on it as a google search shows several results.
I think some have bought the old printed books and have the illustration plates and sell the prints.
I've been combining the French version images with the English version text and creating an ebook out of it. I find comparing and converting some of the language interesting. I love the flower illustrations.

1867 French version:
Volume 1
Volume 2
The images are good, if you download the zip file.






1849 English version
One volume that includes Botany and Horticulture sections.
The images pretty much suck in the pdf file.
It also has some missing sections.
Some sections are in a different order than the French version.
It takes quite a bit of work and editing to create a good ebook out of this.
I'm working on it in Microsoft Word now, but might eventually create an epub.
I use google translate to convert some of the French titles.
Import the French version 1st page of each section into English version for side-by-side comparison.
And then of course, import the beautiful illustrations.




Illustrated by J. J. Grandville
Introduction by Alphonse Karr
Text by Taxile Delord
Translated by Nehemiah Cleaveland

Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard
(b. 13 Sep 1803 -d. 17 Mar 1847)
Pseudonym J. J. Grandville
French caricaturist
(Grandville was his grandparents' professional stage name.)

Salubrious

Webster



archive
gutenberg
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882
Conduct of Life
Part VII
Considerations By The Way

ALSO:
Misattribution Emerson Success

Troubles Quote

It all started when I came across this quote:



Did Mark Twain really say that?
Can I find a reference?

The question was asked
A commenter came to the rescue

From the archives:
Andrew Carnegie,
“An American Four-in-Hand in Britain”,
1883, pp. 312-313


Edits mine.


Edits mine.

Amazon says:
American steel baron Andrew Carnegie and a party of friends took in the British countryside by horse coach-a "four-in-hand"-in the summer of 1881...
Written as a private extended postcard to friends who had not accompanied him on the trip, and as a souvenir for those who had, this 1883 book...

Carnegie and Twain lived same time period, so I'm thinking maybe it was a popular anecdote at the time.

Andrew Carnegie
(b. 25 Nov 1835 – d. 11 Aug 1919)

Mark Twain
(b. 30 Nov 1835 – d. 21 Apr 1910)

It was fun digging around in the archives again.
Love those old crusty dusty books.

Robert Burns

wiki
Robert Burns (b. 25 Jan 1759 – d. 21 Jul 1796)
Died at the age of 37.

Burns statue in Dorchester Square, Montréal, Québec (wiki):

Red Red Rose wiki
Burns worked for the final ten years of his life on projects to preserve traditional Scottish songs for the future. In all, Burns had a hand in preserving over 300 songs for posterity, the most famous being "Auld Lang Syne".

Burns referred to it (Red Red Rose) as a "simple old Scots song which I had picked up in the country."

Youtube:
Red Red Rose
Sung by Andy M. Stewart





Music, quote from archive:
Songs with the melodies (music)

YouTube:
Auld Lang Syne
The Cast, Scottish folk group

Documentary
Robert Burns - Documentary (Part 1 of 9) The People's Poet

gutenberg
Robert Burns

archive
creator:"Burns, Robert, 1759-1796"

Michel de Montaigne

wiki
28 Feb 1533 – 13 Sep 1592
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

One of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance.
Known for popularising the essay as a literary genre.
Popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism.


Photo from Flickr (creative commons):
This statue stands in front of the Sorbonne university in Paris.
Paris 2006 Set
Paris 2009 Set

Wherever your life ends, it is all there.
The advantage of living is not measured by length,
but by use;
some men have lived long,
and lived little;
attend to it while you are in it.

It lies in your will,
not in the number of years,
for you to have lived enough.

Reference
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), French essayist. "That to Philosophize Is to Learn to Die," The Essays (Les Essais), bk. I, ch. 20, Abel Langelier, Paris (1595).

Essays (Gutenberg)
CHAPTER XIX——THAT TO STUDY PHILOSOPY IS TO LEARN TO DIE
Wherever your life ends, it is all there.
The utility of living consists not in the length of days,
but in the use of time;
a man may have lived long,
and yet lived but a little.
Make use of time while it is present with you.
It depends upon your will,
and not upon the number of days,
to have a sufficient length of life.

NOTE: I guess the translator makes a difference, huh. I liked the 1st translation (from wiki) the best.

archive.org - Creator vs subject:
creator: Michel de Montaigne
subject: Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592

Jules Verne EBooks

wiki


(Edits mine.)

Jules Gabriel Verne (b. 8 Feb 1828 - d. 24 Mar 1905)
A French author who pioneered the science fiction genre.
He is best known for:
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1873)

Dug up the epub ebooks from mobileread forum. Sometimes those are formatted better.

Verne, Jules:
Five Weeks In A Balloon
A Journey to the Interior of the Earth
See also:
Comic Book Journey to the Center of the Earth

The Mysterious Island
MobileRead Note: A loose sequel to "20,000 Leagues Under the Seas", "The Mysterious Island" tells the story of 5 men who crash-land on an uninhabited Pacific island after their balloon is caught in a hurricane. Starting with almost no resources, the book tells how they build "civilisation" from nothing. But the island has a mysterious secret...This is one of my favourite Verne novels.

An Antarctic Mystery
Around the World in 80 Days
The Adventures of a Special Correspondent
20,000 Leagues Under the Seas
The Moon Voyage
MobileRead Note: Verne's two classic books "From the Earth to the Moon" and its sequel, "Around the Moon", in a single volume.

The Blockade Runners

In Search of the Castaways


(Illustrations, Edits mine.)

My Note: This is the one I was particularly interested in.
MobileRead Note: A chance discovery of a partially illegible message in a bottle found in a shark's stomach leads to a search for shipwrecked sailors across South America, Australia, and New Zealand (the message specified the latitude, but not the longitude of the shipwreck) with numerous adventures en-route. Basically, it's a travelogue with adventures thrown in.
The characters in this book were very popular, and Verne re-introduced them in "The Mysterious Island", which is itself a sequel to "20,000 Leagues Under the Seas", so ideally this book should be read in between "20,000 Leagues Under the Seas" and "The Mysterious Island".

Jules Verne:
archive
gutenberg

William Butler Yeats

Digging around in archives again.

I like this poem:



By William Butler Yeats (b. 13 Jun 1865 – d. 28 Jan 1939)



Photo from wiki
(Edits mine.)

archive
W B Yeats - Collected Poems, 1889-1939

archive2
W.B. Yeats; a critical study (1915)

gutenberg
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)

mobileread forum lrf
Yeats, William Butler: Collected Poems
(Calibre can convert lrf to epub.)

The Call of the Wild - Robert Service Poem

Dug this out of the public domain archives, so I'll post the links and poem here.







Photos from:
Wiki
(Edits mine.)

Robert W. Service poetry at:
gutenberg
archive

Poem images from:
archive sourdough
(Edits mine.)

mobileread forum epub
Service, Robert W: Songs of a Sourdough

Larry Beck recites the poem:
YouTube
He goes a little too fast, but pretty good overall.
"The poem, written by Robert Service, is performed by Alaska's Ambassador of Good Will, Larry Beck (1935-1990)."
"Though Service never got to Alaska, his poetry describes all the regions of Alaska and the Yukon."

Here's a song of the poem - eh:
YouTube
Eldorado Gene - Robert Service Call of the Wild Gold Prospecting Placer Mining
Music by Ronald Eugene Ralph.

German Songs 16-17th Century

Found this little gem in the archives.
The book of German songs : from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century (1856)
Author: Dulcken, H. W. (Henry William), 1832-1894
Subject: Ballads, German; Ballads, German; Folk songs, German; Folk songs, German; German poetry; German poetry
Samples:

Russia In Pen and Pencil

I was digging around in the public domain archives for stuff on Russian history and found these pictures drawn in pen and pencil. These are good quality and can be very detailed close up.
I still need to read the text in this volume, so I am not sure what time period this covers, but some of the images are dated in the 1500-1600's.

Russian pictures drawn with pen and pencil (1889)
Author: Michell, Thomas, 1836-1899
Subject: Soviet Union -- Description and travel

Here's some samples:

Architecture 0092:

Closeup:


0083:


"Illumination" designs 0025:


Maps 0016:

0047:


People 0119:

Closeup:


This is how they rode horse 0162: - yikes! lol


Scenery 0006:

Closeup:

War and Peace

So somehow I ended up at this blog where the person is going to read Tolstoy's War and Peace during the cold months of January and February.
In about 300 page chunks.
Vol 1 by 15 Jan 11.
Vol 2 by 31 Jan 11.
Vol 3 by 12 Feb 11.
Vol 4 and Epilogue by 28 Feb 11.
(She's reading Rebecca and Woman In White in January also.)

So I'm digging around on the Internet for info.

My freebie doesn't have Volumes? I have Books and there are 15+ Epilogues.
From Wiki summaries, I'd say:
Volume 1 = Book 1-3
Volume 2 = Book 4-8?
Volume 3 = Book 9-13?
Volume 4 = Book 14 - End?

SparkNotes might have better summaries.
Nothing at shmoop.

Wiki:
Leo Tolstoy
Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
(b. 9 Sep 1828 - d. 20 Nov 1910)
(Love those Russian names. LOL)
NOTE: Birthdate 28 Aug 1828 is Julian calendar.

War and Peace - 1865–69 (Born 1828 so 37 years old.)
Anna Karenina - 1875–77 (Tolstoy had his spiritual crisis in his 50's, 1878-.)

War and Peace
English translations:
* Clara Bell (from a French version) 1885-86
* Nathan Haskell Dole 1898
* Leo Wiener 1904
* Constance Garnett (1904)
* Louise and Aylmer Maude (1922-3)
* Rosemary Edmonds (1957, revised 1978)
* Ann Dunnigan (1968)
* Anthony Briggs (2005)
* Andrew Bromfield (2007) More than 400 pages shorter.
* Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2007)

Wiki has a character tree for War and Peace (above link).
Also Character List.

Maps of Russia that I liked (English).
3 different views. One is huge.
pdf format and can be zoomed in for detail.

Maude translation is the one at Gutenberg and is the best freebie version that I could find (epub, mobi, txt, html).
Also at Feedbooks. (I liked some of the summaries here.)

A lot of Tolstoy's works can be read here.
Also check wikisource.

Biography I think?
Leo Tolstoy (1903)
Authors: Chesterton, Perris, Garnett
A few images from that:




Wiki says: They (Leo and Sofya) had thirteen children, five of whom died during childhood.[12]

Tolstoy Timeline
I love timelines. There's three of them as you scroll down the page.

The life of Tolstoy: first fifty years
By Aylmer Maude
Page 204 - scar from bear attack. Is that why Tolstoy had a beard? Timeline above said this happened in 1858.


This looks good:
Writings of Tolstoy
Via classicauthors

Tolstoy photos
I like the one dated 1848.

Born 1828 so about twenty years old in that photo.
Wiki has same pic.
He looks so much better without a beard.

Quote:


Source/Reference:
Pamplets
I actually found that at yahoo answers.
That has to be a first. LOL I never find answers there.

Google Books

I saw partial works by Garnett, Wiener, Dole at Google books, but nothing complete.
It was difficult trying to figure out which translator, which volume, and how many volumes.
Preview the book and download from there instead of going thru new google ebook sign in.

Best links are above, but here's some things I found at Google Books so far:

Dole (translator ):

War and Peace - Dole
Translator is Dole.
Google says Vol 1 and 2.
But the downloaded pdf/epub says in 4 volumes, vol 1?
I compared it with Gutenberg's Maude and this Dole download is thru Book 8, so 2 Volumes.

Unknown Translator:

Complete Works
Compete Works Vol 2
War and Peace Vol III - IV
(Google uses numbers, Documents use Roman Numerals.)
(NOTE: Under Contents, each chapter has some summary text, which might be useful.)

Complete Works
The complete works of Lyof N. Tolstoĭ, Volume 3
War and Peace Vol V - VI
Part (Book) XI - XII
(NOTE: Contents has summary text again.)

Garnett (translator):
War and Peace - Garnett
By Garnett in 3 volumes
Volume II

The Four Gospels
Vol I
Translator? Unclear, but there's a publisher given.
It has a sample of Tolstoy's handwriting:


NOTE: This "Vol I" has a *long* Table of Contents. Some don't. It also notes the inaccuracies occurring with Tolstoy translations. Which is probably a saga in and of itself.



This post might be edited as I continue to study and do research on the subject.

UPDATE:
More War & Peace Readers/Discussions:
Team Tolstoy (See right column.)
Via this blog.
And this one is War & Peace a chapter a day.

John Muir Quotes

I dug out the sources/references for the John Muir quotes I have on my blog.
Because it's fun digging around in old digitally archived books online.

First, a nice pic of John Muir:

Source
(Edits mine.)

QUOTE: “The mountains are calling and I must go.”

The writings of John Muir (1916) - Volume 9
(Page 384 and 385.)


(Images: snippets pieced together by me. Sig from wiki.)

QUOTE: “The power of imagination makes us infinite.”

The North American review (1821) - Volume 245
Page 24 (intro), page 43 and 44 (quote).



How did I find it?
Google it
(Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't.)

QUOTE: “But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.”

From: My first summer in the Sierra (c. 1911), John Muir (pg 196)
google books
archive



QUOTE: “How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!”

The Writings of John Muir: The mountains of California By John Muir, Marion Randall Parsons, William Frederic Badè, Houghton Mifflin, 1916 - Travel (pg 68)



Also at:
The mountains of California By John Muir, The Century co., 1894 - Nature - 381 pages (pg58)
The writings of John Muir (1916) - Volume 4 (pg 68)

QUOTE: “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

Steep trails By John Muir, Houghton, Mifflin, 1918 - 390 pages (Pg 128, same pg no. on all 3 links.)



AND:
The writings of John Muir Volume 8, Houghton Mifflin, 1918 - Travel
The writings of John Muir (1916) - Volume 8


Source
(Edits mine.)

Trivia: John Muir is on California's 2005 state quarter. (See wiki.)