English Wikisource

Outreach and announcements for Wikisource, the free library that anyone can improve.

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Featured Text: The Clipper Ship Era

The featured text for February 2014 is The Clipper Ship Era (1911) by former sea captain Arthur Hamilton Clark.

This history book describes the pinnacle of wooden sailing ships in the mid-nineteenth century (1843–1869). The period is illustrated through "biographies" of some of the greatest ships of the day and accounts of their races across oceans to get their cargo, from tea to opium, to market.

The Clipper Ship Era began in 1843 as a result of the growing demand for a more rapid delivery of tea from China; continued under the stimulating influence of the discovery of gold in California and Australia in 1849 and 1851, and ended with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. These memorable years form one of the most important and interesting periods of maritime history. They stand between the centuries during which man navigated the sea with sail and oar—a slave to unknown winds and currents, helpless alike in calm and in storm—and the successful introduction of steam navigation, by which man has obtained mastery upon the ocean.

After countless generations of evolution, this era witnessed the highest development of the wooden sailing ship in construction, speed, and beauty. Nearly all the clipper ships made records which were not equalled by the steamships of their day; and more than a quarter of a century elapsed, devoted to discovery and invention in perfecting the marine engine and boiler, before the best clipper ship records for speed were broken by steam vessels. During this era, too, important discoveries were made in regard to the laws governing the winds and currents of the ocean; and this knowledge, together with improvements in model and rig, enabled sailing ships to reduce by forty days the average time formerly required for the outward and homeward voyage from England and America to Australia.

In pursuing this narrative we shall see the stately, frigate-built Indiaman, with her batteries of guns and the hammocks stowed in nettings, disappear, and her place taken by the swift China, California, and Australian clippers, which in their turn, after a long and gallant contest, at last vanish before the advancing power of steam.

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New texts in December

Some new texts from December's additions to Wikisource include:

Stabilizing the Dollar (1920) by Irving Fisher

Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904) by John Luther Long

Report on the Radiolaria collected by H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-1876 (1887) by Ernst Haeckel

The Fables of Æsop (1922) translated by Joseph Jacobs

The Conquest of Mount Cook (1915) by Freda Du Faur

How to Play Chess (1907) by Charlotte Boardman Rogers

Observations on the present financial embarrassments (1831) by Montague Gore

Letters to Lord John Russell on the Further Measures for the Social Amelioration of Ireland (1847) by George Poulett Scrope

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens

Madame Butterfly (1904) by John Luther Long

A Christmas Carol (1920 facsimile) by Charles Dickens

A Landscape Painter (1919) by Henry James

Abolition of the Vice-Royalty of Ireland (1850) by John Stuart-Wortley

What is the use of phonetics? (1910) by Otto Jespersen

Jim of the Hills (1919) by C. J. Dennis

The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896) by Arthur Conan Doyle

On the motion of Sir George Strickland; for the abolition of the negro apprenticeship (1838) by William Ewart Gladstone

Gitanjali (1913) by Rabindranath Tagore

Indoor and Outdoor Gymnastic Games (1913) by Albert Meader Chesley

The Story of a Year (1865) by Henry James

Science and Health (1875) by Mary Baker Glover

The battle of the channel tunnel and Dover Castle and forts (1882) by Thomas Berney

Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister or With a Niece Contrary to the Holy Law of God (1885) by Thomas Berney

The leather-workers of Daryaganj (1884) by George Alfred Lefroy

The Republican Party (1920) by Willis Fletcher Johnson & Ray Burdick Smith

The Royal Family of France (1882) by Lucien Edward Henry

Doctor Syn (1915) by Russell Thorndike

Association Football and How to Play It (1908) by John Cameron

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New texts in November

Some of the new texts added to Wikisource last month were:

Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi (1920) by Maxim Gorky

Memoirs of Henry Villard (1904) by Henry Villard

Our big guns (1886) by Frederick Joseph Bramwell

Christian Science (1907) by Mark Twain

History of England, Volume 5 (1893) by James Anthony Froude

The Fuck Brief (2006) by Marc John Randazza

Project Longshot: An Unmanned Probe to Alpha Centauri (1987-1988) by Keith A. Beals, et al; NASA & Universities Space Research Association

The Crystal Palace: Its Architectural History and Constructive Marvels (1851) by Peter Berlyn and Charles Fowler

Forty Thousand Followers of Gandhi in Prison (1923) by India Information Bureau of America

A Brief Study of Mahatma Gandhi (1926) by Rajaram Vinayak Gogate

The Origin of Vertebrates (1908) by Walter Holbrook Gaskell

Armistice Day (1927) edited by A. P. Sanford

An Elementary Manual of New Zealand Entomology (1892) by George Vernon Hudson

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Wikisource is ten today!

The Wikisource project started on 24th November 2003.  2013 is its tenth birthday and, to celebrate, English Wikisource is running a contest.

Over the next fourteen days, ten texts will be proofread:

Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, Volume 1 (1889) by Albert Barrére and Charles Godfrey Leland

Foggerty's Fairy and Other Tales (1890) by William Schwenck Gilbert

The Royal Navy, a History, Volume 1 (1897) by William Laird Clowes

Men of Mark in America, Volume 1 (1905) edited by Merrill Edward Gates

Historical Essays and Studies (1907) by John Acton

Doctor Syn (1915) by Russell Thorndyke

The Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Herman Cyril McNeile

Mahatma Gandhi: His Life, Writings and Speeches (1917) by Mohandas K. Gandhi

The Republican Party (1920) by Willis Fletcher Johnson

Amazing Stories, vol. 21 #6 (June 1947) edited by Raymond A. Palmer

The proofreaders will gain points.  The user with the most points at the end will win a Kobo e-reader.  The runner up in the first week and the runner up in the second week will both win Amazon vouchers.  Prizes are donated by Wikimedia UK.

Everyone is welcome to join in a help celebrate the library that anyone can improve by improving it in this contest.

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Validation month 2013

November is "Validation Month" on Wikisource. This is the month when the Proofread of the Month project focuses on validating works. Validation is the final stage of proofreading, where a second user double-checks that the proofread transcription is correct.

A fully validated work is the most complete and highest quality work that Wikisource provides. It can be seen as a green proofreading ribbon underneath the title of a work.

Several works that only need validation to be complete are currently cycling on the main page (for three hours at a time each).

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Featured Text: The Laws of Hammurabi, King of Babylonia

The featured text for November is The Laws of Hammurabi, King of Babylonia (1903) by H. Otto Sommer, translating the ancient Akkadian work of Hammurabi, sixth king of Babylonia. It was part of the "Records of the Past" series published by the Records of the Past Exploration Society.

This is the first translation of the Hammurabi's code made into English, and only the third to be made following the its discovery by modern archaeologists. Prior to Sommer's translation it only existed in French and German among modern languages. The Laws of Hammurabi were written circa 1772 BC, in the Middle Bronze Age. They are one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world and the longest from the Old Babylonian period. The entire legal code is made up of 282 enumerated laws, here rendered into legal terminology by attorney William Earl Ambrose, almost half of which concerns contract law and a third concerns family law. It contains very early examples of familiar legal concepts, such as the presumption of innocence and both parties presenting evidence. This translation is accompanied by detailed photographs of the entire original Akkadian text of the laws for those who can read cuneiform.

The ruins of Susa now being excavated by the distinguished explorer M. de Morgan have already yielded important results. He was led to undertake the excavation of ancient Susa from inscriptions found in the ruins of Babylon, from which he learned that many of the most important monuments of the Babylonian kings had been carried, as trophies of war by the Elamite kings, to their capital, Susa. When he left Egypt in 1888 it was for the purpose of recovering from the ruins of Susa these monuments. He had not been long at work in Susa before he found the stele of Narâm-Sin c. 3,800 B.C., which showed a high state of art in the Tigro-Euphrates valley nearly 6,000 years ago. This discovery was rapidly followed by others. The most important of which is the stele of Hammurabi, upon which was engraved his code of laws, c. 2,250 B.C.

Two translations of this code have been made, one into French by Scheil, the assyriologist of the French Expedition to Persia, of which M. de Morgan is the director, and the other into German by Dr. Hugo Winckler. The following translation is from the latter by Dr. H. Otto Sommer and construed into legal phraseology by William Earl Ambrose, Esq.

This code is the oldest collection of public laws that has yet been discovered. It is a reflection of the social conditions existing in Babylonia 4,000 years ago. The jurist of to-day will recognize in it most of the fundamental principles on which our social legislation is based.

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New texts in October

A selection of the new texts available from Wikisource from October are:

The Opium Revenue (1875) by William Muir

Book of Halloween (1919) by Ruth Edna Kelley

Zoological Illustrations Series II (1833) by William Swainson (1789-1855)

Ballot (1839) by Sydney Smith

Employers' Liability (1880) by George William Wilshere Bramwell

DMCA Subpoenas Should Not Be Abused to Silence Speech (2006) by Kurt Opsahl

A Hand-book to the Primates (1894) by Henry Ogg Forbes

Shall We Have a Channel Tunnel? (1883) by Horace Courtenay Gammell Forbes

Judging from the Past and Present, What are the Prospects for Good Architecture in London? (1864) by Nicholas Wiseman

Ports of the World - Canton (1920) by the United States Bureau of Naval Personnel

Lhasa and Central Tibet (1903) by Gombojab Tsybikov

An Address to Women (1885) by Harvey Goodwin

Landmark Education v. Rick Ross answer (2004) by Peter L. Skolnik

Workhouses and Women's Work (1858) by Louisa Twining

Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree - US Immigration and Naturalization Service, Report Number 1 (1981) by Thomas N. Casey

Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920) by Harry Houdini

Local Taxation and Poor Law Administration in Great Cities (1869) by William Rathbone

Dwellings of Working-People in London (1874) by Ughtred James Kay-Shuttleworth and Sydney Hedley Waterlow

Notes on New Zealand (1892) by W. E. Swanton

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Wikisource Community Survey

The Wikisource Community Survey ends soon.  It has been advertised on the Wikisources but if you haven't joined in yet, now is your last chance.  The survey is intended to find out what Wikisourcers want for the future of their project.

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Featured Text: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

There are two featured texts this October, both with a Halloween theme.  The second text is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) by Washington Irving.

The story is set in the Dutch-American village of Tarry Town, New York in 1790, and concerns a love triangle between the outsider Ichabod Crane and the locals Abraham Van Brunt and Katrina Van Tassel. It culminates in the famous chase as Crane, when walking home through the woods at night, runs into the legendary Headless Horseman. The nature of the horseman is left for the reader to decide but Crane is never seen again, leaving Van Brunt free to pursue Van Tassel's affections.

The short story is one of the earliest examples of enduringly popular American fiction. It borrows elements from the folklore of several European countries and transplants them to late 18th century New York state.

It was originally published in 1820, in a collection called The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon (a pseudonym of Irving). This version is based on a standalone 1864 edition published by G. P. Putnam with additional illustrations.

On the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market-days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land, among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

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Featured Text: The Canterville Ghost

There are two featured texts for October, both chosen to match with the upcoming Halloween.  The first text is The Canterville Ghost (1887) by Oscar Wilde.

This short story is a humorous piece about a haunted house and the clash of two cultures.  The story focusses on Sir Simon de Canterville of Canterville Chase, a British country house, and the American Otis family who have bought the place and moved in.  Sir Simon attempts to scare the Otises, as is his traditional duty, but is frustrated his inability to do so.  The Otis family, meanwhile, continue in an unfrightened and practical manner, with many consumerist solutions to Sir Simon's antics.  The roles are reversed and the ghost becomes the victim of the family.

The story was originally published in the magazine The Court and Society Review in February 1887.  This version is based on the 1906 hardback edition.

When Mr. Hiram B. Otis, the American Minister, bought Canterville Chase, every one told him he was doing a very foolish thing, as there was no doubt at all that the place was haunted. Indeed, Lord Canterville himself, who was a man of the most punctilious honour, had felt it his duty to mention the fact to Mr. Otis when they came to discuss terms.

"We have not cared to live in the place ourselves," said Lord Canterville, "since my grandaunt, the Dowager Duchess of Bolton, was frightened into a fit, from which she never really recovered, by two skeleton hands being placed on her shoulders as she was dressing for dinner, and I feel bound to tell you, Mr. Otis, that the ghost has been seen by several living members of my family, as well as by the rector of the parish, the Rev. Augustus Dampier, who is a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. After the unfortunate accident to the Duchess, none of our younger servants would stay with us, and Lady Canterville often got very little sleep at night, in consequence of the mysterious noises that came from the corridor and the library."

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New texts in September

Some of the works added to the Wikisource library in September were:

Anglican sisterhoods (1886) by William Connor Magee

Conspiracy to murder the United States Attorney for the District of Oregon (1990) by the United States Department of Justice

Great Britain and the Suez Canal (1882) by William Rathbone

Native Flowers of New Zealand (1888) by Georgina Burne Hetley

Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux vol. 1 (1819) by James Hardy Vaux

The Afghan War (1878) by Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy

The promises of Turkey (1877) by Arthur Arnold

Best Russian Short Stories (1917) by various authors

The land league proposal (1882) by Michael Davitt

The Dioceses of England (c.1892) by Edward Augustus Freeman

The Fangs of Tsan-Lo (1946) by James Arthur Kjelgaard

Tithes : a paper read at the Diocesan Conference at Rochester, May 31, 1883 (1883) by Granville William Gresham Leveson-Gower

Unarmoured ships (1875) by Thomas Allnutt Brassey

A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1791) by Mary Rowlandson

Phosphor (1888) by John Filmore Sherry

Putting a Stop to Modern-Day Slavery (2010) by Federal Bureau of Investigation

Workhouse nursing (1867) by Florence Nightingale

Speech on military intervention in Syria (2013) by Barack Obama

The Pathfinder (Vol V No 6) (1911) edited by Glen Levin Swiggett

The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman (1887) by William Langland, edited by Thomas Wright

Female suffrage (1875) by Goldwin Smith

The government of London (1884) by William McCullagh Torrens

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Proofread of the Month: Stabilizing the Dollar

Perhaps aptly, the proofread of the month for October is Stabilizing the Dollar (1920) by American economist Irving Fisher.  Fisher's stabilization was an attempt to prevent the damage caused by inflation and deflation; both of which had affected America in the years before his publication. 

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Proofread of the Month: The First Voyage Round the World

This month's proofreading project is an 1874 translation of Antonio Pigafetta's The First Voyage Round the World, made by Lord Stanley of Alderley.

Pigafetta was a Venetian scholar who travelled with Ferdinand Magellan on his first circumnavigation of the world.  He kept a journal of his experiences, an wrote an account of his experiences called Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo, parts of which were published in 1525 (although the entirety was not published until the late eighteenth century).

This book is already partly transcribed and can be read in the main namespace as The First Voyage Round the World. The main namespace, or "mainspace", is were completed Wikisource transcriptions can be read and downloaded.

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Featured Text: The Yellow Wall Paper

The featured text for September is The Yellow Wall Paper (1901) a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman originally published in the January 1892 issue of The New England Magazine.

The story follows the narrator's descent into madness after her Doctor husband confines her to the upstairs bedroom of a rented house after diagnosing female hysteria. The title refers to her growing obsession with only source of stimulation in the room. This is an early piece of American feminist literature which condemns the treatment of women by the 19th century medical establishment.

This work was transcribed as part of a proofread-a-thon at the GLAM Boot Camp, which was held at the National Archives in Washington D.C. during April 2013. Prior to that it existed as only an unsupported import from Project Gutenberg. During the proofreading process it was discovered that the previous version contained numerous errors, including a missing line of text. The current and featured version is fully supported by page scans and has been validated as matching the text of the 1901 printed edition.

  It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity, — but that would be asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and perhaps — (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) — perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

You see, he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression, — a slight hysterical tendency, — what is one to do?

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New texts in August

Several texts were added to the Wikisource library in August.  These include:

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) by Washington Irving

On the forfeiture of property by married women (1870) by Arthur Hobhouse

Affidavit of Ronald DeWolf (1979) by United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts

Homoeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions (1842) by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

International Religious Freedom Report 2005 - Sweden (2005) by United States Department of State

"Silence" (1900) by Leonid Andreyev

Wood Carvings in English Churches—II. Stalls, Thrones & Chairs (1910) by Francis Bond

Charles Harte letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild (1899) by Charles Harte

The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war (1884) by Edward J. Lowell

The homes of the working classes and the promises of the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P. (1884) by J. M. Brindley

Villette (1st edition) (1853) by Charlotte Brontë

A voice from the signal-box (1874) by a signalman

Commentary on the Maya Manuscript in the Royal Public Library of Dresden (1906) by Ernst Förstemann

The slave trade of east Africa (1869) by the Church Missionary Society

An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs (1915) by Sylvanus Griswold Morley

The bitter cry of outcast London (1883) by the London Congregational Union

Electoral purity and economy (1882) by Sydney Charles Buxton

Some account of the town of Zanzibar (1869) by Edward Steere

Female suffrage. A letter from the Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, M.P. to Samuel Smith, M.P. (1892) by W. E. Gladstone

The Lull before Dorking (1871) by Baldwyn Leighton

The Religion of Ancient Egypt (1880) by Peter le Page Renouf

The farm labourer in 1872 (1872) by Baldwyn Leighton

The Rover Boys in Camp (1904) by Arthur M. Winfield

A Conchological Manual (1842) by George Brettingham Sowerby II

Marriage as a Trade (1909) by Cicely Hamilton

The State and the Slums (1884) by Edward Stanley Robertson

Pauperization: cause and cure (1871) by Baldwyn Leighton

Agricultural labour (1872) by Baldwyn Leighton

Tales of the Dead (1813) by various authors, translated by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson

Poems (collected) (1921) by Alice Meynell

Val d'Arno (1890) by John Ruskin

Measuring Tools (Machinery's Reference Series) (1910) by various authors

The Buke of the Order of Knyghthood (edition 1847) by Ramon Llull, translated by Sir Gilbert Hay

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Featured Text: Tracks of McKinlay and Party Across Australia

English Wikisource's featured text for August is Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia, an 1863 travelogue by John Davis, based on his own journal and experience of the journey.

Davis was part of the South Australian Burke Relief Expedition of 1861, led by John McKinlay, a search party sent by the government to find the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition. Davis was in charge of the four camels taken along with the party due to his experience with the animals in India. After discovering the fate of the prior expedition, McKinlay's party continued to explore. Meeting difficult terrain while attempting to transnavigate the continent, they diverted from the Northern Territory into Queensland and reached Port Denison (the modern town of Bowen) almost exactly one year after setting out.

McKinlay's expedition set out from Adelaide on 16 August 1861—152 years ago today.  This was almost a year after the Burke and Wills expedition had embarked on their own journey out of Melbourne on 20 August 1860.  McKinlay and company left Port Denison by boat, to return to Adelaide, on 17 August 1862, just over one year after they left.

The reader has learned from our Introduction the lamentable mischance that left Burke and his party to perish at Cooper's Creek. The intelligence received in the colonies that Brahe and Wright had left the depot at the Cooper without learning anything of the missing party, excited general concern. The Victoria Government took prompt measures to prosecute a further search; and in order to make this search as complete as possible, expeditions were organized to proceed by both the north and the south. Mr. Alfred Howitt, an experienced Australian explorer, was ordered off at once to Cooper's Creek, while further expeditions were being prepared for a march to commence from the Gulf of Carpentaria. Mr. Walker was fitted out for a journey from Rockhampton, on the eastern coast of Queensland, to the River Albert, at the head of the Gulf, and Mr. Landsborough was despatched from Brisbane in a small brig, the "Firefly," also to the same part of the gulf, where he was to begin a journey towards the south. The government armed steamer, "Victoria," was also sent to hover about the same rendezvous with suitable supplies for rendering assistance to the cause generally.

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Proofread of the Month: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

The first work to be transcribed this month, Marriage as a Trade (1909) by Cicely Hamilton, has already been completed.  You can read it in full on Wikisource.

Following the Female Author Month theme of this August on Wikisource, the next work to be proofread is Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan (1920) translated by Annie Shepley Omori and Kōchi Doi.

This work combines English translations of three medieval diaries of Japanese courtiers from the 11th century Heian period.

"The Sarashina Diary" (更級日記 or Sarashina Nikki) was written by a lady-in-waiting known only as Sugawara no Takasue no musume (daughter of Sugawara no Takasue) and sometimes referenced as Sarashina Shikibu or 'Lady Sarashina'.

"The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu" (紫式部日記 or Murasaki Shikibu Nikki) was written by Murasaki Shikibu, a novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōshi. Murasaki was also the author of The Tale of Genji.

"The Diary of Izumi Shikibu" (和泉式部日記 or Izumi Shikibu Nikki) was written by Izumi Shikibu, a mistress of two princes, member of Empress Shōshi's court and a rival to Murasaki.

Both Murasaki and Izumi are counted among the The Thirty-six Female Immortals of Poetry.

Omori was an American artist who married a Japanese student (the first person to introduce basketball to Japan) and moved to Tokyo.  Doi was a Japanese professor of English at the Imperial University of Tokyo and a scholar of English literature.