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| The man who sped up the arrival of the Renaissance |
GUEST BLOG / By
Catherine Sustana, contributor, Thoughtco.com--Founded by the late Michael Hart in 1971,
Project Gutenberg is a free digital library containing more than 43,000
e-books. Most of the works are in the public domain, though in some cases
copyright holders have given Project Gutenberg permission to use their work.
Most
of the works are in English, but the library also includes texts in French,
German, Portuguese, and other languages. The effort is run by volunteers who
are constantly working to expand the library's offerings.
Project
Gutenberg was named after Johannes Gutenberg, the German inventor who developed
movable type in 1440. Movable type, along with other advances in printing,
helped facilitate mass production of texts, which fostered the rapid spread of
knowledge and ideas in art, science, and philosophy. In other words: Goodbye,
Middle Ages. Hello, Renaissance.
Note:
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Project
Gutenberg offers a wide range of texts, from the United States Constitution to
old issues of Popular Mechanics to charming medical texts like 1912's Cluthe's
Advice to the Ruptured.
If
you're specifically hunting for short stories, you can start with the directory
of short stories arranged by geography and other topics.
(NOTE:
If you have trouble accessing the Project Gutenberg pages, look for an option
that says, "Turn off this top frame" and the page should work.)
At
first, this arrangement seems straightforward, but on closer examination,
you'll realize that all of the stories categorized under "Asia" and
"Africa," for example, are written by English-speaking authors like
Rudyard Kipling and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote stories about those
continents.
In
contrast, some of the stories categorized under "France" are by
French writers; others are by English writers writing about France.
The
remaining categories seem somewhat arbitrary (Ghost Stories, Victorian Stories
of Successful Marriages, Victorian Stories of Troubled Marriages), but there is
no question that they are fun to browse through.
In
addition to the short stories category, Project Gutenberg offers an extensive
selection of folklore. In the children's section, you can find myths and
fairytales, as well as picture books.
ACCESSING THE FILES
When
you click on an interesting title on Project Gutenberg, you'll be confronted with
a somewhat daunting (depending on your comfort level with technology) array of
files to choose from.
If
you click "Read this ebook online," you'll get completely plain text.
This is an important part of what Project Gutenberg is trying to accomplish;
these texts will be preserved electronically without complications from fancy
formatting that might not be compatible with future technologies.
Nevertheless,
knowing that the future of civilization is secure won't improve your reading
experience today one iota. The plain-text online versions are uninviting,
awkward to page through, and don't include any images.
A
book called More Russian Picture Tales, for example, simply includes
[illustration] to tell you where you might see a lovely image if only you could
get your hands on the book.
Downloading
a plain text file rather than reading it online is slightly better because you
can scroll all the way down the text instead of hitting "next page"
over and over. But it is still pretty stark.
The
good news is that Project Gutenberg really, really wants you to be able to read
and enjoy these texts, so they offer many other options:
HTML.
In general, the HTML file will provide a better reading experience online. Take
a look at the HTML file for More Russian Picture Tales, and-voilà!-the
illustrations appear.
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files, with or without images. These files work on most e-readers, but not on
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Kindle
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in arms because of the Kindle Fire, unlike previous Kindles, is not
particularly compatible with free e-books. For suggestions, you can read their
webmaster's Review of the Kindle Fire.
Plucker
files. For PalmOS devices and a few other handheld devices.
QiOO
mobile e-book files. These files are intended to be readable on all mobile
phones, but Javascript is required.
THE READING
EXPERIENCE
Reading
archival material, electronically or otherwise, is very different from reading
other books.
The
lack of context can be disorienting. You can often find a copyright date, but
otherwise, there's very little information about the author, the piece's
publication history, the culture at the time it was published, or its critical
reception. In some cases, it may be impossible to even figure out who had
translated works into English.
To
enjoy Project Gutenberg, you need to be willing to read alone. Going through
these archives is not like reading a bestseller that everyone else is reading,
too. When someone at a cocktail party asks you what you've been reading, and
you answer, "I just finished an 1884 short story by F. Anstey called 'The
Black Poodle,'" you will likely be met with blank stares.
But
did you read it? Of course you did, because it begins with this line:
"I
have set myself the task of relating in the course of this story, without
suppressing or altering a single detail, the most painful and humiliating
episode of my life."
Unlike most works you read in anthologies, many of the works in the Project Gutenberg library have not withstood the proverbial "test of time." We know that someone in history thought the story was worth publishing. And we know that at least one human being -- a volunteer from Project Gutenberg -- thought a given story was worth putting online forever. The rest is up to you.
Browsing
through the archive may raise some questions for you about what on earth that
"test of time" really means, anyway. And if you feel you'd like some
company in your reading, you can always suggest a Gutenberg piece to your book
club.
THE REWARDS
Though
it's wonderful to see a familiar name like Mark Twain in the archives, the
truth is that "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" has
already been widely anthologized.
You
probably have a copy on your shelf right now. So the Gutenberg price tag,
though fabulous, isn't really the best thing about the site.
Project
Gutenberg brings out the literary treasure-hunter in all of us. There are gems
at every turn, like this wonderful voice from Bill Arp (pen name of Charles
Henry Smith, 1826-1903, an American writer from Georgia), featured in The Wit
and Humor of America, volume IX:
"I
almost wish every man was a reformed drunkard. No man who hasn't drank liker
knows what a luxury cold water is."
Cold
water may, indeed, be a luxury to the drunkard, but for someone who loves short
stories, the real luxury is the chance to explore thousands of
rich-but-almost-forgotten texts, to read with fresh eyes, to get a glimpse of
literary history, and to form unencumbered opinions about what you read.
SOURCE:
https://www.thoughtco.com/free-short-stories-from-project-gutenberg-2990442
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