The PD Gazette - call for comments

[neadods]

menikoff (by the way, happy belated birthday!) and I are actually losing our minds enough to start pulling together the articles to do this - a "Dickens Project"-style online journal currently dubbed the PD Gazette.

The PD Gazette will be a snapshot of public domain literature and history, presented as a series of snapshots of period literature accompanied by the occasional article that puts said literature in context. The first book to win the coin toss to be serialized will be The Three Musketeers, originally published as a serial novel in 1844.

So far, the supplementary materials discussed for this run of the PD Gazette include:

- poetry of 1844 (Poe, Eliz. Barrett, Blake, etc)
- short stories of 1844 (Poe, etc.)
- possible popular song lyrics (Swing Low Sweet Chariot was first published this year. Huh.)
- 1844 literary reviews of Musketeers, if available
- historical background for 1844 (original article, written by us)
- historical background for time of Musketeers (original article, written by us or granted with permission)
- possibly original artwork/pictures of Dumas, etc.

My plan is for us to pull together all the materials we would need for the entire Musketeer run and put together the first issue as a .pdf. If we haven't made ourselves crazy, we'll then go start talking to people like Stanford and Killdevil Hill and Project Gutenberg, etc. We'll actually make the entire run of the book, then post it online (no print version) at set intervals, so that all the hard work is done up front.

And if we're not nuts by the end of it, we'll talk about the next book, since we can both think of dozens that we want to do. There is a possibility of theme issues too, where we break the historical link and instead do a short run where everything is tied by theme. (A goth set based around Northanger Abby is irresistable to me.)

I'm slightly staggered by how enthusiastic other folks are for this - not only Menikoff, but someone to whom I mentioned it in passing who practically begged to give us unlimited server space for hosting it.

All of this winds up to being a lengthy preamble to a question I've already asked - what, oh ye teachers, librarians, and lit buffs, ought to be added?

Comments

[hildy.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a nifty project. What help do you need? I'm game for research hunting.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Well, there's what Becky suggests below. :>

So far I've found a fair smattering of Poe, Dickens, Browning, Hawthorne, & Emerson to cover the short stories and poetry. More names to add to the list, and a historical timeline would be wonderful.

[hildy.livejournal.com]

Timeline for Dumas or historical context or Musketeers era?

"yes, please" is a valid answer.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Yes, please!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I can give you some info - if we go 1843-1845 (I'm leaning towards that - gives better context) - then you've got the first telegraph message in the US, the comet Donati, the Millerite end of the world scare and the annexation of Texas. We need to get French and English history in as well...

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Please, please include an explanation of the monetary units used!

Other things that would be good to include would be:
- newspaper articles from 1844, or at least snapshots of a front page or two
- bio of Dumas (especially interesting because of his mixed-race background)
- short samples of the popular but crappy literature of the time, the 1844 equivalents of Danielle Steele
- a comparison of translations, perhaps the opening paragraph or two as translated by different people over the years

yeah - ideas!

[nycdeb.livejournal.com]

I love love love these ideas...and you know - there are so many parts to Three Musketeers, we'll even have room for them.

Happy happy!!!

Re: yeah - ideas!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about that. It seems like the original was published over a course of just a few months, but it's what - 68 chapters? How are we going to dice this up? I'd like to have it run no longer than a year... and we'd probably make some potential users happy if we can cut it down to the 9 months of a school year.

Some very juicy supplementary stuff. If we open it up to the year before and the year after (that doesn't seem too much off track) then we can use The Gold Bug, The Raven, & Tell Tale Heart (Poe); Celestial Railroad, Tale of the Ragged Mountain, & Rappacccini's Daugher (Hawthorne), even The Chimes by Dickens (I figure we'll leave Christmas Carol to Stanford). Also Elizabeth Barrett Browning (her Poems) and Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Essays, Second Series."