Guest Post
Thank you so much for having me back at My Love for Jane Austen, Lúthien84! I'm really excited to be here to talk about this restored digital edition. By "restored", I mean returned (save errors) back to the 1813 Egerton first edition, and it's the publishing of both editions that I want to talk about here today.In Jane Austen's time, the physical aspect of publishing was not too tremendously changed from what it was in Johannes Gutenberg's time, hand-operated, with the type set by hand. Charles Mahon, 3rd Earl Stanhope, had developed a completely cast iron printing press, which sped production, and German printer Friedrich Koenig was designing presses using rotating cylinders and steam power, but these did not become more widespread until after Austen's death.
What was changing was the number of novels printed. As James Raven notes, in 1775, 31 new novels were published; in 1811, Sense and Sensibility appeared among 80 total new novels. Authors wishing to get a book into publication had a number of options at the time. They could sell the copyright outright, leaving the publisher to bear all the risk of publication; sell subscriptions to intended readers, to fund the publication (a clear forerunner for Kickstarter!); underwrite the cost of publication themselves, the riskiest option; or enter into a profit-sharing arrangement with the publisher.
Publishing novels was a risky business, hence the number of options, each with a different degree of risk and reward. Initial publication runs were small — Sense and Sensibility's first edition ran 750 copies, and many were less — to minimise the risk. Generally Austen favoured the risk/reward of bearing the cost of publication (not a common choice) but she sold the copyright for Pride and Prejudice to Thomas Egerton for 110 pounds, before the success of Sense and Sensibility had become apparent (I will be covering this in more detail in a future post on this little tour).
When I began this project, I had thought that Egerton would have been the only middle man between Austen's initial vision, and what was printed in that first edition. But then I learned that Egerton entrusted the printing to two different printers: Charles Roworth for the first volume and George Sidney the second and third. And as I set about the restoration, going through scans (and even for a few amazing hours, Goucher College's actual first edition first volume), it became clear that there were decided discrepancies between how the printers handled things. Chapter beginnings and letters were formatted differently, there are discrepancies in spelling and capitalisation (it was, I realised, impossible to tell whether they had been introduced in the printing of the novel, or were as written by Austen herself) and the Sidney volumes, particularly the third, were much more sloppily typeset.
Perhaps this is why William Gifford, a sort of editor/literary agent for John Murray, who published Austen's later novels, wrote to Murray:
"I have read Pride and Prejudice again — 'tis very good — wretchedly printed, and so pointed as to be almost unintelligible. Make no apology for sending me anything to read or revise. I am always happy to do either, in the thought that it may be useful to you."
So while I was aiming to restore the content to the 1813 Egerton edition, it would thankfully be in the pristine cleanness of e-book text. Although, bad typesetting aside, I still found the 1813 volumes of Pride and Prejudice generally more readable than many modern paperbacks, which cram all three volumes into one book, using small font, thin margins, and minimal line spacing. All of this was impossible, in that manual typesetting era, and so I like to think the digital edition actually brings the book back closer to that 1813 reading experience, particularly since I restored it to three volumes, albeit all encompassed in one e-book. At the font size I typically use on my Kindle, the pagination was usually only off by a few lines.
My medium was not lead type, but instead Microsoft Word, as I've done for my own books, closely following Amazon's formatting guidelines. I made my first line-by-line pass comparing the Republic of Pemberley's online version, which I'd chosen to save typing, against the scans on my tablet. Because I had difficulty locating a scanned copy of the first volume at first, I worked off of a scan of the 1817 third edition, and made some comparisons using Goucher's first edition.
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| The first volume of the first edition and my Word doc |
After this, I did a draft conversion of the Word doc, then pulled the novel up on my Kindle, and the scanned first edition on my tablet, once again comparing line-by-line against the original volumes. By this time, I'd been fortunate enough to finally track down a first volume online, for it had become apparent to me that even by 1817, there had been quite a lot of changes from what was first published. And because Austen had sold the copyright, none of these changes were under her control.
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| My draft Kindle file and the scan on my tablet |
I had several setbacks as I got closer to final publication. One was that I learned Amazon has a policy against publishing public domain books unless they are annotated, illustrated, or otherwise enhanced. I had already been planning to publish annotations on any adjustments from the first edition due to errors, or noteworthy things, but I began to be concerned these would not be enough. So I wrote a series of notes on various topics related to the historical context of the novel, and particular things that are happening within; they will, I hope, be of particular use to readers less familiar with the Regency era, and perhaps even JAFF readers may pick up a new detail or two.
I also learned that Amazon's minimum price for books published through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is $0.99 USD. My intent had always been to make this freely available to readers — it was to be my way of honouring Austen on the 200th anniversary of her death — so this was a real disappointment. However, some research did tell me that if it is published for free elsewhere and enough people report these prices, Amazon will lower the price. (And thus, I hope readers here will help out with my campaign to make this free — here's how.)
Once I had the Word doc as I wanted it, it was time to upload to KDP. From here, I could publish to Kindle in Amazon's store, but also download the file to be converted for Nook and Kobo formats. Once you set a book to publish on these stores, it usually appears in 24-48 hours, a far cry from the lengthy printing, binding and distribution process that would have been required to get the Egerton first edition out into the hands of readers.
(Readers interested in learning more about the original publication of Pride and Prejudice are encouraged to read James Raven's piece, "Book Production", in the book Jane Austen in Context, as well as this online article on early editions of Pride and Prejudice by Sarah Ogar.)
Book Blurb
In 2017, the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, her "darling Child" has been painstakingly restored to the three-volume 1813 first edition. Adjustments have only been made where there were errors in the 1813 text, and are noted in detailed annotations at the end of the novel.
Please enjoy this beloved story, restored to Jane Austen's original voice.
Author Bio
She was afraid of long series until she ventured upon Patrick O'Brian's 20-book Aubrey-Maturin masterpiece, something she might have repeated five times through.
Alas, her Constant Love series is only planned to be seven books right now, and consists of A Constant Love, A Change of Legacies and the in-progress A Season Lost.
She blogs about her writing endeavours at A Lady's Imagination, where readers can find direction for the various social drawing-rooms across the Internet where she may be called upon.
Giveaway
Thank you very much for visiting my blog and explaining the lengthy process of restoring Pride and Prejudice back to its original edition, Sophie. In addition I appreciate your kind offer of sponsoring an e-book of your hard work. Claudine DiMuzio Pepe, thanks for inviting me to participate in this book tour.If you like to enter the giveaway, just leave a comment or show your support and love to Sophie. The contest is open to worldwide and ends at 11.59 pm on Sunday, 6 August 2017.
The winners will be announced two days later and must contact me on this page within 72 hours after the winner's annoucement is up in order to claim the prize. Please take note that although you may have written your email address in your comment, you still need to inform me. If I do not hear from you, a new winner will be selected instead.
Such a labor of love. There are so many editing nightmares out there. I never imagined Austen among them. Thank you for your hard work.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a wonderful endeavor so happy that Sophie is doing this!
ReplyDeleteMy goodness, what a lot of work went into this! Thank you so much Sophie, for all of this hard work. When I think of the number of times I've read P&P over the years and never picked up on for instance, the "nieces vs daughters" error in some of my copies, it brings home to me what an intensive labour of love this must have been.
ReplyDeleteI've done some proof/beta reading myself and know it takes at least two passes to do a proper job so comparing two copies of the same work side-by-side must be eye-boggling!
BeckyC, I hadn't realized it either, but when I did it just felt wrong to me that a book so loved got that treatment. This really felt like something that needed to be done.
ReplyDeletedarcybennett, thanks, I'm glad to hear it makes you happy!
Anji, in some ways it's easier to compare and in some ways it's harder. Usually the problem was when I got too caught up in the familiar words and sort of glazed over!