All Featured Texts
From time to time we feature a special one of our texts. This is the full list of all previously featured texts.
April 15, 2024:
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture is a 1946 study of Japan by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict. Commissioned by the OSS (now CIA) in 1945, it was intended to help America and its Allies understand Japanese culture for post-war business and diplomatic relations.
Prior to World War II, State Shinto was deeply embedded in Japanese national identity and governance. It was not just a religion, but also a state ideology that emphasized imperial worship and nationalism. After Japan’s surrender in 1945, the Allies, led by the United States, initiated several reforms to dismantle the militaristic and imperial aspects of Japanese society. A key part of this process was the disestablishment of State Shinto. This involved removing Shinto’s influence from government and education, thereby separating religion from state affairs.
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword played a pivotal role in this transitional period. It explored the dichotomy within Japanese culture--the aesthetic and pacifist qualities symbolized by the chrysanthemum, contrasted with the martial values represented by the sword. Benedict’s work helped American policymakers and businessmen understand the complexities of Japanese society, including its religious and ethical systems and its values and social norms. It highlighted the cultural divide in how guilt and shame are perceived and managed in eastern societies versus western societies. Understanding these differences was considered crucial for implementing reforms and for establishing future diplomatic and business relationships.
If you like what we do, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
April 1, 2024:
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime and mystery fiction that features an amateur or a professional law officer, like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, who investigate serious crimes. With the advent of Prohibition and organized crime in the 1920’s in the U.S. and Canada, a new literary genre of private-eye fiction known as hardboiled fiction developed. Short stories in pulp fiction magazines like Black Mask became popular and capitalized on publishing violent stories that focused on the mayhem and injustice surrounding the criminals, not the circumstances behind the crime. Authors adopted this new private-eye detective genre and “hardboiled” became a literary subgenre in the 1930’s with Dashiell Hammett’s detective character, Sam Spade.
Although hardboiled (detective) fiction shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction, it has a detective protagonist who battles the violence of organized crime while dealing with a legal system as corrupt as the organized criminals. The detective, made cynical of the cycle of violence and corruption, is often the antihero. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer; and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Nick Charles, and The Continental Op.
Here at Faded Page, we have ten Philip Marlowe books beginning with The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely. Sam Spade appears in The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories and The Maltese Falcon, while Nick Charles is featured in The Thin Man. The Continental Op is featured in four titles: The Dain Curse, Red Harvest, and short stories “One Hour" and “The Gatewood Caper"
If you like what we do, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
March 15, 2024:
On March 8, we celebrated International Women’s Day, with a 2024 theme of “Inspire Inclusion”. A worthy writer to consider in light of this event is British author and journalist Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957). Richardson was one of the earliest modernist writers to use the stream-of-consciousness technique in her writing. She is considered a feminist author because of the emphasis she put on women’s experiences and the feminine point-of-view.
Richardson’s best known work is Pilgrimage, a sequence of 13 novels published between 1915 and 1967. The work follows the life of Miriam Henderson, and her story is based, to a large extent, on Richardson’s own life. The first 6 volumes of Pilgrimage can be found here at Project Gutenberg, a site similar to this one but following US rather than Canadian public-domain rules. Volumes 7 through 13 can be found here at Faded Page.
We invite you to join us as a volunteer. By proofreading just a few pages, you can help us make more public-domain books like Dorothy Richardson’s novels available to readers. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
March 1, 2024:
On February 19, the annual Family Day holiday was celebrated in a number of Canadian provinces. As we take time to appreciate our own families, we can also consider the famous families that appear in literature.
There are many families that appear in juvenile series. These include a number from the Stratemeyer Syndicate, such as the two sets of fraternal twins, Nan, Bert, Freddie and Flossie in The Bobbsey Twins, brothers Frank and Joe in The Hardy Boys and sisters Jean and Louise is The Dana Girls. Many of Enid Blyton’s books feature families, including the popular series, The Famous Five. This series involves the adventures of three siblings, a cousin and the family dog.
Some families featured in our collection are real ones. The story of the famous pioneering Ingalls family was told by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her Little House series starting with Little House in the Big Woods. The image is an illustration by Helen Sewell depicting Laura and her sisters Mary and Carrie. The history of the Plantagenet kings of England is told in Thomas B. Costain’s 4-volume nonfiction series, starting with The Conquering Family.
Not all family stories are happy ones. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina opens with “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Costain’s saga shows family members warring not just with foreign invaders but amongst themselves. Another notable dysfunctional family can be found in William Faulker’s works. The trials of the Compson family are described in works such as The Sound and the Fury
Which literary family is your favourite? If the book is in Canada’s public domain and you don’t see it on our site, consider joining us as a volunteer to help us expand our collection. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
February 15, 2024:
Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC) was founded in 2007 by Michael Shepard and David Jones to support the digitization of public domain books. The main principles of our mission are to: (1) preserve Canadiana, one page at a time, (2) take advantage of the favourable copyright laws in Canada to make books written by authors who are in the public domain—that is, currently out of copyright in Canada—more available to the public.
Up until December 30, 2022, copyright of a work by an author was limited to 50 years from the end of the calendar year of the author’s death. As of January 1, 2023, this was changed to 70 years from the end of the calendar year of death. Therefore, all the work of any author who died during 1971 or before is in the public domain.
For authors who died in 1972, the new rule applies. Works by authors who died in 1972 will not be in the public domain until 2043.The law was not made retroactive which means that any author who was in the public domain stays in the public domain.
As an example, George Herbert Sallans, a Canadian journalist, died in 1960, so his books are in the public domain. Unfortunately, J. R. R. Tolkien, who wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, among many other books, died in 1973. DPC will not be able to publish his books until 2044.
Here is the reason why Canada’s Copyright Act was amended. In September 2018, the United States, Mexico, and Canada reached an agreement to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). USMCA took effect on July 1, 2020, replacing NAFTA. The new law involved only small changes. One was to the Canadian Copyright Act which was amended to change author copyright protections from 50 years to 70 years among other amendments.
If you wish to see more details about Canadian copyright rules, you can check out A guide to copyright produced by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.
So, sadly, this means that we are constrained in which books we can offer you on Faded Page. But be heartened to know that there are literally thousands of public domain books still to be converted into eBooks. If you want to help out, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
February 1, 2024:
For many people around the world who celebrate the Lunar New Year, February 10 marks the start of the Year of the Dragon. Here at Faded Page, we have a number of books that feature dragons in one way or another!
Dragons, real, imaginary or symbolic, appear in a number of mysteries. These include The Mystery of the Fire Dragon by Carolyn Keene from the popular Nancy Drew series and The Dragon Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine from the Philo Vance series.
Dragons can be fearsome creatures, as seen in Dragon Moon: A Novelette of Lost Atlantis, a story that appeared in pulp magazine Weird Tales. Another work in the fantasy genre is the classic novel, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis from the Chronicles of Narnia.
More charming stories suitable for younger children include Freddy and the Dragon, the final book in the Freddy the Pig children’s series by Walter R. Brooks and Poo-Poo and the Dragons by C. S. Forester and illustrated by Robert Lawson.
According to Chinese horoscopes, the coming Year of the Dragon is supposed to bring new opportunities and challenges to those prepared to take them on. With that in mind, consider joining our team of volunteers! For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
.January 15, 2024:
Faded Page is known mainly for its fiction, such as drama, mystery and classic literature, and its non-fiction, such as history, periodicals and travel. But buried within all these books are a few odds and ends that don’t get much attention. One such group is our knitting and crochet pattern books. Knitting and crocheting are craft hobbies using needles to create fabric from yarn, which is a long length of fibre such as wool that is often wound into balls. Knitting uses two needles to interlace loops of yarn to form fabric. Crochet is similar but uses a hook to interlock loops of yarn.
We have five books that describe how to knit and crochet. For example, Book 190: Learn to Knit is a basic instructional book on teaching the basics of knitting: what equipment you need, types of yarn to use, and how to use two needles to turn yarn into clothing. Once you learn the techniques, you can move on to Book 168: Bazaar Crochet and Knit. In this book you can create small knickknacks that you might see for sale at a craft show. For the more adventurous, you can tackle Book 156: Fashions For Men to Knit and Crochet. This book contains patterns on how to create sweaters, socks and scarves. While the authors of these patterns had boys and men in mind for the clothing, there is nothing to stop you from knitting these for girls and women. Knitting and crocheting may not be for everyone, but once you learn the basics, it provides a lifetime of enjoyment!
If you like what we do, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada
.January 1, 2024:
Série Les Thibault en français et en anglais
La série complète Les Thibault est désormais disponible sur Faded Page en français et en anglais. Les nouveautés en français qui complètent la série sont L’Été (en trois parties) et Épilogue. Roger Martin du Gard a reçu le prix Nobel de littérature avant même d’avoir fini d’écrire cette série. Ces romans mettent en scène deux familles, les Thibault et les Fontanin, au début du XXe siècle et pendant la Première Guerre mondiale.
La traduction anglaise a été épuisée pendant des décennies, mais nous avons maintenant sur Faded Page les traductions anglaises de Stuart Gilbert: The Thibaults (les six premiers volumes de la série) et Summer 1914 (les deux derniers volumes).
Si vous aimez ce que nous faisons, venez nous rejoindre et relire quelques pages. Pour plus d’information, consultez notre site compagnon, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
Les Thibault Series in French and English
The complete Thibault series is now available on Faded Page in French and English. Our new French offerings completing the series are L’Été (in three parts) and Épilogue. Roger Martin du Gard won the Nobel Prize for Literature before he even finished writing this sequence. The novels focus on two families, the Thibaults and the Fontanins, at the beginning of the 20th century and during the First World War.
The English translation has been out of print for decades; but we now have on Faded Page Stuart Gilbert’s English translations: The Thibaults (the first six volumes of the series) and Summer 1914 (the final 2 volumes).
If you like what we do, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.December 15, 2023:
A wintry snowstorm. A stranded train. An isolated country house. All the ingredients are here for a classic English mystery set on Christmas Eve. Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was published in 1937. In this story, a group of passengers, strangers to one another, abandon the snowbound train and find shelter in a house. The house is apparently deserted but filled with inviting comforts. Then a body is found.
J. Jefferson Farjeon (1883-1955), born in London, England, was a Golden Age mystery novelist, playwright and screenwriter. One of his stage plays, Number Seventeen, was adapted to film by Alfred Hitchcock. In the past decades, there has been renewed interest in his work, as several of them have been republished by well-known publishers.
Here at Faded Page, we have an assortment of works by Farjeon, which can be found here, and we continue to work at broadening this collection. If you would like to help us add more public domain works to Faded Page, please consider volunteering at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
Happy holidays to all our readers and volunteers and best wishes for the new year!
December 1, 2023:
The Group of Seven were a famous group of Canadian artists who were known for their vivid depictions of Canadian landscapes, especially from the northern part of the country. The original group included Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley. As with many people who have careers in the arts, these men were not completely focused on landscapes. Many of them took on other contracts to make a living. These included book illustrations, some of which are featured here on Faded Page.
Arthur Lismer did sketches, one of which is shown here, for Come A Singing!, a book of Canadian folk songs by Marius Barbeau. Frank (Franz) Johnston illustrated Friendly Acres, a book of humorous anecdotes by Peter McArthur. Franklin Carmichael created some engraving work for the Thorn-Apple Tree by Grace Campbell. Frederick Varley illustrated Canada: The Foundations of Its Future, by Stephen Leacock.
Two other notable artists, Tom Thomson and Emily Carr, were not members but are frequently associated with the Group of Seven. Both of them are featured on Faded Page but that is another story.
If you would like to help us add more public domain books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada
November 15, 2023:
Here in Canada, a “snowbird” refers to a Canadian who travels to Florida before the snow arrives and returns with the onset of spring, after having spent the winter enjoying the sunny climate down south. Perhaps Canadian snowbirds have been inspired by Freddy the Pig, the main character of a popular children’s series by Walter R. Brooks.
The first book, Freddy Goes to Florida, was first published in 1927 with the title To and From Again and has Freddy joining a group of his barnyard friends in travelling to Florida from Upstate New York. They have hilarious adventures along the way, encountering alligators and other dangers, and eventually returning to the farm of their owners, the Beans..
Here at Faded Page, most of the 26 Freddy books published between 1927 and 1958 can be found here: Special Collection: The Works of Walter R. Brooks. You can also learn more about Freddy at Friends of Freddy, an organization devoted to the appreciation of this book series.
If you would like to help us add more public domain books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada
November 1, 2023:
With the release of A Lodge in the Wilderness, Faded Page has a complete collection of the novels written by John Buchan. Buchan, a prolific author of Scottish birth, wrote 27 novels. His stories range from spy fiction to adventure. His best known work, The Thirty-Nine Steps, a book featuring one of Buchan’s favorite characters, Richard Hannay, is about a mysterious plot to assassinate the King of Greece in the hopes of starting World War I. Alfred Hitchcock adapted the book to film in a well known movie with a completely different plot but the essence of the book is still there. There are four other novels featuring Richard Hannay including Greenmantle and The Island of Sheep. There are also five books in the Sir Edward Leithen series and three books in the Dickson McCunn series. Notable standalone novels include The Free Fishers, “a tale of conspiracy, secret societies, foreign agents and a fiendish plot to assassinate the Prime Minister.” In addition to his novels, Buchan wrote books on military history and biographies.
Come and browse through all 57 books that Faded Page offers on John Buchan. We do not yet have a complete collection of Buchan books but we are working on it! If you would like to help us add more Buchan books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
October 15, 2023:
Hallowe’en is coming and we have a Henry Kuttner story for you. “The Salem Horror” is about priestess Abigail Prinn, who was executed during the Salem Witch Trials, being awakened when a man moves into her old home three hundred years later and uncovers her secret “Witch Room”. Abigail’s awakened corpse attempts to summon forth Nyogtha, an amorphous mass composed of a black sticky substance capable of extending tentacles to manipulate the environment, in order to wreak her vengeance on the descendants of the townsfolk responsible for her death. The only way Nyogtha can be sent back to its dimension is through the use of a ritual combining an ankh, the Tikkoun elixir, and the Vach-Viraj incantation.
Nyogtha is one of several Cthulhu Mythos deities which Kuttner created as a member of the “Lovecraft Circle”. His first published story, “The Graveyard Rats”, caught H.P. Lovecraft’s eye and the two began corresponding. Lovecraft encouraged Kuttner to incorporate Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos elements into Kuttner’s own work which Kuttner did. Kuttner’s contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos include creating Iod, Vovadoss, and Hydra, and Nyogtha in “The Salem Horror” story.
Here at Faded Page, we have six Kuttner Cthulhu Mythos stories: “Hydra”, “The Frog”, “Spawn of Dagon”, “The Invaders”, “The Jest of Droom-Avesta”, and “The Salem Horror”, in addition to 120 other Kuttner titles. If you enjoy these works and would like to help us add other public domain books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
October 1, 2023:
The arrival of autumn is cause for celebration. This is the season where, in many parts of the world, people can enjoy the fruits of the farmers’ labours over the past months. In Canada, the Thanksgiving holiday is celebrated on the second Monday of October. Lucy Maud Montgomery has written a number of short stories about this special day, including “The Bartletts’ Thanksgiving Day”. Thanksgiving in the United States is celebrated later in the season. Laura Ingalls Wilder gives a mouth-watering description of a Thanksgiving feast in Little Town on the Prairie. For a look at an Asian celebration, you can read about China’s Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, in Poets and Murder from the Judge Dee historical mystery series.
There are also books celebrating the natural beauty of the season. Round the Year with Enid Blyton – Autumn Book is written for children and describes educational activities that teach them about the plants that abound in autumn and the behaviours of animals at this time of year. Frances Cornford’s Autumn Midnight is a collection of poems that evoke the moods of the season. Finally, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s essay, “The Woods in Autumn”, describes the glorious beauty and “uncanny enchantment of the autumn forest.”
If you would like to help us add more public domain works like these to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
Image: Autumn Woods by Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902).
September 15, 2023:
“September 30 marks the day for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The day honours the children who never returned home and survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities. Public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools is a vital component of the reconciliation process.”
So say the words of the Canadian Federal government on this shameful aspect of Canadian history. It is a mark of our time that the government has owned up to its participation in the residential schools that were part of Canada’s less than stellar engagement with its native peoples.
Unfortunately the response was not so open in the past. In the early 20th century, Peter Henderson Bryce was a health inspector who visited residential schools and reported on the deplorable conditions under which the schools were run. This report is available here at Faded Page: The Story of a National Crime: being an appeal for justice to the Indians of Canada.
Bryce reported that extremely poor sanitary conditions were leading to a high rate of disease and death mainly due to tuberculosis, a very preventable disease. The author characterized this as a national crime and hoped that his report would lead to meaningful action. Unfortunately the government at the time refused to publish the report and quietly terminated Bryce’s employment. Bryce in turn published the report at his own expense but as we can see from history, it received little recognition.
Bryce’s report achieved little and he suffered the consequences. We can all hope for more transparency with our future government and less need for whistleblowers like Peter Henderson Bryce.
If you would like to help us add other public domain works like this one to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
September 1, 2023:
As many students here in Canada and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere return to school, you may be interested in seeing how students learned to read in the early 20th century.
For example, The Canadian Readers, Book I, A Primer and First Reader offers a charmingly illustrated collection of Mother Goose and other verses.
The Haliburton First Reader by Margaret Winifred Haliburton collects simple poems and song lyrics and includes material taken from works by well-known writers such as Christina Rossetti, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Its follow-up, The Haliburton Second Reader, features poetry and short tales. We are working on adding more books from this series to our collection.
More advanced readers may have been assigned readings from Narrative and Lyric Poems, edited by O. J. Stevenson. This included classic poems from the likes of Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
These books give us a glimpse into the education of children in North America a century ago. If you would like to help us add other public domain books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
August 15, 2023:
Mazo de la Roche was born in Newmarket, Ontario, north of Toronto, on January 15, 1879 and died July 12, 1961 at the age of 82 in Toronto. Some of the information conveyed below is from her autobiography, Ringing the Changes, and from Wikipedia.
As an adult, de la Roche wrote various plays and short stories, and managed to sell some of them, like most writers starting off. Her first published book, Explorers of the Dawn, appeared in 1922, and was a fix-up of some previously published sketches, vignettes and stories rewritten. Her first two proper novels, Possession (soon to be in Faded Page) from 1923 and Delight from 1926, were romantic novels. They were mild successes but nevertheless earned her little in income or recognition.
Her third novel, Jalna, was submitted to the American magazine Atlantic Monthly, winning a $10,000 award. Its subsequent publication in 1927 brought de la Roche fame and fortune at the age of 48. She ended up writing 16 Jalna novels covering a century in the life of a family called the Whiteoaks and their various generations in a fictional locale in Southern Ontario. Her final novel Morning at Jalna appeared in 1960 when she was 81.
Mazo de la Roche’s Jalna books, along with a Whiteoaks play, are available here, while all her books that are available at Faded Page can be found here.
If you enjoy these works and would like to help us add other public domain books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
August 1, 2023:
John Russell Fearn (1908-1960) was an extremely prolific British author who wrote under many pseudonyms including Vargo Statten and Volsted Gridban. During the 1930s, he wrote for pulp magazine but switched during World War II to books. Becoming a central figure in the post-war paperback boom, he wrote numerous westerns, crime stories, and romances as well as his science fiction.
Under the pseudonym Thorton Ayre, Fearn wrote a four-novelette series for Fantastic Adventures magazine featuring the Golden Amazon. Complementing the Superman figure created in the 1930’s, superwoman Violet Ray, known as the Golden Amazon, was the caped crusader. The first novelette, The Golden Amazon, ran in July 1939. It was followed by The Amazon Fights Again, The Golden Amazon Returns, and finally Children of the Golden Amazon. Fearn abandoned pulp and gave the character an entirely different origin story for the original novel The Golden Amazon in 1944, which, despite claims in several bibliographies, is not a mere reworking of the magazine stories. The 1944 novel was reprinted in The Toronto Star Weekly to such acclaim that twenty-three sequels followed, the last appearing posthumously there in 1961.
Here at Faded Page, we have the original four novelettes, in addition to 131 other titles by Fearn, with more titles in the works. If you enjoy these works and would like to help us add other public domain books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
July 15, 2023:
July is Lakes Appreciation Month! The North American Lake Management Society proclaimed July as the time to respect our lakes and not take water for granted. We work and play on them and drink from them. Let’s not forget that and try to take better care of them. On Faded Page we have a number of lake related books.
Waterton Lakes National Park: lakes amid the mountains describes one of Canada’s treasured resources. Nestled in the mountains of British Columbia, this government publication describes not only the lakes but also the interesting geological formations. An older but no less interesting book, Historic handbook of the northern tour. Lakes George and Champlain; Niagara; Montreal; Quebec describes the intertwined histories of New France and New England in the 17th and 18th centuries. It also delves into the historical sites along the St. Lawrence Valley. In the fiction category we have Lake of Gold by John Buchan, which relates the tale of a young boy spending his summer holidays in the Canadian countryside. In the mystery category we have The Chinese Lake Murders by Robert Hans van Gulik, an intriguing story of political intrigue, sordid greed, and dark passions in ancient China.
We have several lake related books in our rounds which will soon become ebooks on Faded Page. Help us get those published sooner by volunteering to proof a few pages at our related site at Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
July 1, 2023:
The Origin and Meaning of Place Names in Canada, compiled by George Henry Armstrong (1858-1938), gives insight into Canada’s early history and shows the influence of First Nations and settlers on the country’s development.
Many places take the names of early settlers, honoured for their contributions to government, the military or business, Others pay homage to royalty from England and France, including the cities of Regina, Victoria, and Prince Albert, and the town of Louisbourg.
In Ontario, one can take a tour of cities inspired by their European eponyms. These include London, Paris, Athens, Swansea, Limerick, Dresden and Odessa.
Occasionally, place names reflected local annoyances. For example, Souris, the French word for “mouse”, was used to name a river and two towns which had experienced plagues of mice. The Chaleur inlet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was named for the oppressive heat experienced by Jacques Cartier and his sailors.
A large number of names have their origins in the languages of Canada’s First Nations. For example, the Memphremagog lake in Quebec is derived from an Abenaki term meaning “great extent of water”. The town of Penetanguishene in Ontario is from an Abenaki name meaning “the place of white falling sands”. The name Quebec means “where the water narrows” in the Algonquin, Cree and Micmac languages. Finally, the name Canada is derived from the Iroquois word Kanata or Kanada, meaning “cabin” or “lodge”.
Since 1930, the publication of this book, there have been many new place names added to the Canadian landscape, reflecting the increasing diversity of its population. Examples include Ikeda Bay, named after the Ikeda Mine in British Columbia, which employed many Japanese immigrants, and the community of Okno in Manitoba, settled by Ukrainian and Icelandic immigrants.
Happy Canada Day to all our readers, volunteers and friends here at Faded Page! If you would like to help us add more public domain books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
Image by Harvey K from Toronto, Canada - Ottawa fireworks 49, CC BY 2.0
June 15, 2023:
Here in the Northern hemisphere, summer is just around the corner! Here are some suggestions for books that you can read while relaxing on vacation or just enjoying the warm sunny weather.
Among our juvenile fiction, you can find Summer Term at St. Clare’s, the third book in Enid Blyton’s series about twin sisters at a boarding school, or The Clue of the Black Flower by Carolyn Keene, which has the Dana girls solving a mystery while at summer camp.
Consider reading L. M. Montgomery’s essay, "The Woods in Summer" before going on your next nature walk, and browse through Canadian Wildflowers or North American Wildflowers by Catharine Parr Traill and Agnes Fitzgibbon to identify flowers you might see along the way.
If your favourite summer activity is gardening, browse through our many issues of The Canadian Horticulturalist, found in our Periodicals Collection.
If exploring new places is what you like to do in the summer, try Topper Takes a Trip by Thorne Smith, a hilarious comedy with ghosts, or A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway’s memoirs about his time in France.
Finally, consider Summer by Edith Wharton. This is one of Wharton’s lesser-known works because the subject matter was controversial for the time, but the author had declared it one of her own personal favourites.
If you enjoy these works and would like to help us add other public domain books to our collection, please consider volunteering to proof a few pages at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders of Canada.
Image: “Reading by the Shore” by Charles Sprague Pearce (1851-1914)
June 1, 2023:
Grace Campbell (1895 – 1963) was born Grace MacLennan Grant in Williamstown, Ontario. Williamstown is in a rural part of eastern Ontario, near the St. Lawrence River. She grew up on a farm in the area. Both her parents were of Scottish ancestry and the surrounding community was rich with Highland heritage. It was this environment that inspired her first novel, Thorn-apple Tree. Before her writing career, she attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and excelled at English literature. It was at university that she met her future husband, Reverend Harvey Campbell.
Grace and Harvey had three sons, Alexander and Robert who were twins and a younger son named Donald. During World War II, both twins who served as pilots in the RCAF died in action in 1944.
The grieving of the loss of her sons did not affect her future writing as she continued to publish books about every three years. In addition to Thorn-apple Tree, we also have Fresh Wind Blowing available on Faded Page. Other novels such as The Higher Hill and Torbeg are in the process of becoming eBooks at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Help us add more of Campbell’s works and other public domain books by volunteering to proof a few pages.
May 15, 2023:
Jean-Hippolyte Giraudoux (1882-1944) était un diplomate, romancier, essayiste et dramaturge français. Il est considéré comme l’un des dramaturges les plus importants de l’entre-deux-guerres.
La présentation de sa première pièce, Siegfried, a propulsé Giraudoux des rangs des romanciers mineurs au premier plan du mouvement théâtral français. Ce succès fulgurant auprès du public et de la critique durera toute sa vie et même au-delà, puisque certaines de ses œuvres ultérieures ne seront jouées qu’après sa mort, notamment l’une de ses plus populaires, La Folle de Chaillot.
Le thème majeur de Giraudoux, la recherche par l’homme d’une pureté et d’un idéal au-delà des imperfections de la réalité, a touché une corde sensible chez les spectateurs des années 1930. Ce thème apparaît sous une forme concrète dans La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu, où les personnages débattent de la question de la paix et de la guerre. On pourrait dire que la véritable raison de l’attrait de Giraudoux est son style - son récit élégant, civilisé et plein d’esprit de la vie dans ses divers aspects. L’usage particulier que l’écrivain fait des métaphores et des symboles, sa vision ironique de la réalité et son sens de la spontanéité et de l’inattendu ont ravi son public.
Si vous aimez ce que nous faisons et souhaitez voir plus de Jean Giraudoux sur Faded Page, rejoignez-nous et relisez quelques pages. Pour plus d’informations sur comment participer bénévolement, consultez notre site compagnon, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Jean-Hippolyte Giraudoux (1882-1944) was a French diplomat, novelist, essayist, and playwright. He is considered one of the most important dramatists for the period between the two World Wars.
The presentation of his first play, Siegfried, catapulted Giraudoux from the ranks of the minor novelists to the forefront of the French theatre movement. This startling success with both audiences and critics was to last throughout his lifetime and beyond, as some of his later works were not performed until after his death, including one of his most popular, La Folle de Chaillot (The Madwoman of Chaillot).
Giraudoux’s major theme, man’s search for a purity and an ideal beyond the imperfections of reality, touched a sensitive nerve with the theatre-going public of the 1930s. The theme appears in a concrete form in La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (Tiger at the Gates) in which the characters debate the issue of peace and war. It could be argued that the real reason for Giraudoux’s appeal was his style—his elegant, civilized, witty account of life in its diverse aspects. The writer’s special use of metaphors and symbols, his ironic view of reality, and his sense of the spontaneous and the unexpected delighted his public.
If you like what we do and want to see more Jean Giraudoux on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 1, 2023:
There has been much recent debate in the press surrounding the banning of books, especially those dealing with gender identity. While this is troubling, the censorship of written material is nothing new. In Canada, book censorship has been going on for nearly 100 years. In 1938, an “examiner of publications” reviewed 1,400 publications and banned 56 titles that were considered seditious or salacious. Canada customs also has a long history of preventing the importation of materials that it considers “lewd”, including many titles with LGBTQ+ themes. Politicians on both sides of the debate have commented on censorship. One Member of Parliament expressed a wish that the border services would read the text instead of just looking at the pictures. Another accused them of not being able to tell the difference between literary realism and pornography.
There are a number of books on Faded Page that have been banned in the past. When Peyton Place was published in 1956, its importation was banned due to lewd and salacious language. The ban was lifted in 1958. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall was banned in British Columbia, as well as Ulysses by James Joyce. Other books, such as Sanctuary by William Faulkner, also experienced the sour eye of our customs officials. Some authors experience wholesale bans on their works, and these include Guy de Maupassant, Leon Trotsky and D. H. Lawrence.
There are many other books, both mundane and controversial, that are waiting in the wings for publication on Faded Page. Help us get them there sooner by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 15, 2023:
The Crime at Black Dudley is the first book in Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion series. In a remote country manor, members of a house party gather to play a ritualistic game, but soon after, the host’s uncle is found dead.
Albert Campion, an amateur detective, plays only a minor role in this first book but is the key character in 18 more books and many short stories that make up the series. Eight of the stories were adapted for television in 1989 and 1990, with Peter Davison assuming the role of Campion. Campion likes to come across as fatuous but is, in truth, clever and well-educated, with an aristocratic background.
Margery Allingham (1904-1966) was a popular English novelist from the “Golden Age” of detective fiction. While best known for her Campion stories, Allingham was a prolific writer and had published many other novels, novellas and short stories, as well as several stage and radio plays.
You can find a selection of Allingham’s work here at Faded Page, including most of the Campion novels. If you would like to help us augment this collection, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 1, 2023:
The Worrals series consists of 11 books published between 1941 and 1950 by English writer Capt. William Earl Johns (1893-1968), author of the Biggles and Gimlet series. The first book in the series is Worrals of the W.A.A.F. All the other titles have “Worrals” in the title, and the series at Faded Page can be found here. The first six books take place during World War II, while the remaining five books are located after the war, in remote and exotic places around the world.
When WWII broke out, Johns became a lecturer at the Air Defence Cadet Corp. Due to his success in encouraging young men to train to be pilots through his Biggles series of stories, the Air Ministry requested that he create a female counterpart to Biggles to aid in the recruitment effort for the W.A.A.F. (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force). The character “Worrals” first appears in 1941 with her side-kick “Frecks”, both flying for the W.A.A.F. By the time the fourth Worrals book, Worrals on the War-path, was released, Worrals and Frecks were actively behind the lines engaged in the war.
Johns modeled Worrals after two female aviators he knew: Pauline Gower, who established the women’s branch of the Air Transport Auxiliary during WWII, and Amy Johnson (“Johnnie”), who was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia. Interestingly, our next and eighth Faded Page Worrals book to be released is Worrals Down Under.
If you like what we do here at Faded Page and would like to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 15, 2023:
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, we bring you Irish author Maurice Walsh.
Maurice Walsh (1879-1964) was a novelist and short story writer born in Ballydonoghue in County Kerry, the third of ten children. Walsh produced some 20 novels and numerous short stories, many set in Scotland or the West of Ireland and containing a mix of drama and romance. Much of his work invoked a rural Ireland that was fast disappearing in the 1930s. His most popular short story, “A Quiet Man”, became an Oscar-winning movie with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
Much of his work was produced in the aftermath of the 1923-1924 Irish Civil War. Like other Irish writers of his era, Walsh was influenced by Romantic nationalism. In his novels, he appeals to the idea of a united Gaeldom and a united Ireland, regardless of nationality or religion. And No Quarter (coming soon to Faded Page) is set within Montrose’s combined Scottish-Irish army, while the hero is an Englishman and member of the Protestant Church of Ireland. The five stories in Green Rushes that include “The Quiet Man” share a common theme of IRA members coming to terms with their memories of the fighting.
These titles are just a few of the Maurice Walsh titles we carry on Faded Page with more to come. If you like what we do, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, visit our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 1, 2023:
On March 8, we celebrate International Women’s Day, and the 2023 theme is “Embrace Equity”. A worthwhile book to read, that helps us see the inequity in higher education faced by women in the past and to appreciate the gains we have made since, is Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers.
This 10th novel from Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey series of detective novels has Wimsey in a minor role while featuring Harriet Vane instead. Vane returns to Shrewsbury College, her alma mater, to help the Dean investigate mysterious and malicious incidents happening at the school.
Shrewsbury, a fictional college, is based on Somerville College, Sayers’s own alma mater and a part of University of Oxford. She studied modern languages and medieval literature there and graduated with first-class honours in 1915. At the time, degrees were not awarded to women, and it was not until 1920 that Sayers was finally awarded an MA degree.
Apart from giving us a glimpse of the challenges women faced in pursuing higher education at that time, Gaudy Night is also a first-rate mystery of the kind for which Sayers is known.
You can help us bring more public-domain works like this one to Faded Page. All it takes is proofreading a few pages. More information about volunteering can be found at our partner site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 15, 2023:
February is Black History Month in Canada. This country has a long and varied history with people of African heritage. The first ones came to Upper Canada as slaves, a little known but shameful fact. These people came with United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution and some of them owned slaves. Fortunately, freedom began early in 1793 when Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe banned the importation of slaves and freed some of their children living here. In 1819 all slaves were declared free. During the early part of the 19th century Upper Canada became known as a haven for refugees fleeing slavery. A large influx came after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. Before the American Civil War there were over 50,000 former slaves living in Upper Canada.
Historian Fred Landon, who worked at the University of Western Ontario, documented many of the slaves’ stories, some of which we host on Faded Page. Agriculture Among the Negro Refugees in Upper Canada describes the experience of former slaves who took up farming here. They proved to be just as competent at agriculture as comparable settlers from England and France. Canadian Negroes and the Rebellion of 1837 talks about the part some of them played in our own political strife. Canadian Negroes and the John Brown Raid discusses their participation in this incident in 1859, which was one of the events that led up to the American Civil War.
These are a few of the papers that are on Faded Page and more are on the way. You can help proof some of these and other books at our partner site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 1, 2023:
Father Brown is a fictional Roman Catholic priest and amateur detective who, with shapeless clothes, a large umbrella, and an uncanny insight into human behavior, solves mysteries and crimes. His unremarkable, seemingly naïve appearance hides an unexpectedly sharp intelligence and keen powers of observation. His job as a priest allows him to blend into the background of a crime scene, using his unimposing demeanor to his advantage when studying criminals, to whom he seems to pose no danger.
He is featured in 53 short stories by English author G. K. Chesterton, published between 1910 and 1936. Chesterton loosely based him on the Rt. Rev. Msgr. John O’Connor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford, who was involved in Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism in 1922.
When he created Father Brown, Chesterton was already famous in Britain and America for his philosophical and paradox-laden fiction and nonfiction. Father Brown was a vehicle for conveying Chesterton’s view of the world and, of all his characters, is perhaps closest to Chesterton’s own point of view, or at least the effect of his point of view. Father Brown solves his crimes through a strict reasoning process more concerned with spiritual and philosophical truths than with scientific details, making him an almost equal counterbalance with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, whose stories Chesterton read. However, The Father Brown series commenced before Chesterton’s own conversion to Roman Catholicism.
Chesterton wrote 25 Father Brown stories between 1910 and 1914, then another 18 from 1923 to 1927, then 10 more from 1930 to 1936. Most of these can be found in The Father Brown Stories.
If you like what we do and want to see more G. K. Chesterton on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 15, 2023:
If you are interested in detective mysteries, do consider reading the Judge Dee series. Judge Dee is a famous magistrate-detective, justly described as “the Sherlock Holmes of ancient China”. This character is based on a real person who was born and worked during the seventh century in Liang (south-east) China. The first book, Dee Goong An (English title: Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee), was translated from Chinese and further books were written and illustrated by Robert Hans van Gulik as historical novels set in ancient China.
Judge Dee has Liang Hoong (referred to as “Sergeant Hoong”) as his trusted adviser, and Ma Joong as first lieutenant to assist him. He was known as a magistrate (an official responsible for catching criminals as well as sentencing them) and dealt with mysteries usually involving one or more murders. As these events took place more than a thousand years ago, Judge Dee had to use his own powers of observation and ingenuity to solve the mysteries.
Note that there are conflicting views about the numbering of the books in the series. To find the books, visit this page.
Please help us expand our collection of public domain ebooks by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 1, 2023:
Happy New Year to all our readers, volunteers and supporters! We wish you happiness and good health for 2023, as well as lots of new e-books to read!
Who were the most popular authors at Faded Page this past year? The top ten are listed below. Enid Blyton leads the way with over 166000 downloads! Beloved Canadian author L. M. Montgomery just missed getting on this list, coming in 11th in 2022.
- Enid Blyton
- C. S. Lewis
- Ian Fleming
- Ernest Hemingway
- William Faulkner
- Dorothy L. Sayers
- John Steinbeck
- Sylvia Plath
- Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Patricia Wentworth
Interested in seeing the top authors of the past month or since we started collecting statistics in 2015? The details are all here. We also have lists of the most popular books on our site.
Please help us expand our collection of public domain ebooks by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 15, 2022:
Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC) is 15 years old this month. Faded Page, created in 2012, is also celebrating 10 years this year – quite an achievement on the Internet where Websites frequently come and go. DPC was co-founded by David Jones and Mike Shepard in 2007. To commemorate this event, an anniversary project was proposed where 25 books would be worked on throughout 2022, to be posted by December 1. And we did it! The last book in the mix, Egerton Ryerson: His Life and Letters, was posted to Faded Page on November 28. The 25 books are mostly Canadian. These include such titles as The Dark Weaver, by Laura Goodman Salverson, winner of the Governor-General’s Literary Award in 1937; The Bruce Beckons—The Story of Lake Huron’s Great Peninsula; The French Régime in Prince Edward Island; A Short History of the Canadian People; and Native Trees of Canada. There was one French book—Maria Chapdelaine, a classic of French-Canadian literature. This book was a dual entry, as both the original French version by Louis Hémon and a translated version by W. H. Blake were done. All these books are now available on Faded Page.
The anniversary project was the brainchild of David Jones who sadly passed away two months ago and did not live to see his dream come to fruition. However, his legacy lives on and more Canadian content will follow in the years to come.
Help us add more public domain books for Canadian authors like Hémon and Salverson by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 1, 2022:
Many of us in the northern hemisphere look forward to the cold winter months with the snow, frozen lakes, and new outdoor activities not available during the warmer seasons. Snow skiing, ice hockey, ice skating and tobogganing are just a few of the many outdoor activities eagerly anticipated. But there are quieter delights about the coming of winter which many people also look forward to, such as a walk in the first snow.
Lucy Maud Montgomery captures the joy of a walk in the woods after the first snow in her short essay, “The Woods in Winter", published in The Canadian Magazine’s Christmas edition of December 1911. Here she reacquaints herself with the trees, the wind, and the sunlight on the fresh new snow. This work provides an interesting comparison to her essays, “The Woods in Summer” and “The Woods in Autumn.”
These essays are just a few of the many Lucy Maud Montgomery titles we carry on Faded Page. If you like what we do and want to see more of it on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 15, 2022:
Wikipedia describes “Pulp Fiction” as “Pulp magazines (often referred to as ‘the pulps’) which were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term ‘pulp’ derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed.”
While there were various types of “Pulp magazines”, we’re going to limit this article to specifically science fiction (sci-fi). Typically they cost about 10 cents to 25 cents, and contained multiple stories–-some short, some long with some being presented over multiple issues. Most were published in the United States by several publishers with varying magazine titles to help partially distinguish the type of stories they contained.
Some authors may not have been well known at the start of their career, but the better ones came to be well known. Some of the more popular ones in FadedPage.com are: Ray Cummings, John Russell Fearn, Henry Kuttner, Otis Adelbert Kline, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Clark Ashton Smith and Stanley G. Weinbaum. If any of these names don’t sound familiar a number of authors wrote under a pseudonym, or more than one.
As you may expect some of the stories tried to base them on known astronomy and physics facts, while others were wild fictional adventure tales. You may notice some of the covers were geared toward young adolescent males, as some featured skimpily dressed females in situations that may not have anything to do with the stories. They would certainly not be used today and be considered grossly sexist, but back then they helped to sell the magazines.
Feel free to check out some of these stories here.
If you would like to see more books like these, we invite you to come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 1, 2022:
Louis Hémon was born in France. He came to Canada in 1911 and was so enamoured with Quebec that he wrote a novel, Maria Chapdelaine. The book is considered a classic of French Canadian literature. In the book, the widow Maria must contend with new suitors - one offers a change to life in the big city while another offers a continuation of life in the countryside.
Hémon died in a train accident in 1913 so was unable to see how popular his novel would become.
Here at Faded Page, we are able to present to you both the French version and an English translation. Translated books are not as easy to publish since we must consider not only the author who must be in the public domain but also the translator. In this case, these are the original author, Louis Hémon, and the translator, W. H. Blake (1861-1925). In addition, we are also able to present a French version with illustrations by artist Gérard Cochet (1888-1969) who is also in the public domain.
The English language translation includes an introduction written by Blake. He critiques Hémon’s use of French Canadian idioms. Since Hémon was from France, he did not have a complete grasp of the idiosyncratic version of French that is spoken in Quebec.
Louis Hémon est né en France. Il est venu au Canada en 1911 et s’est tellement épris du Québec qu’il a écrit un roman, Maria Chapdelaine. Ce livre est considéré comme un classique de la littérature canadienne-française. Dans le livre, la veuve Maria doit composer avec de nouveaux soupirants - l’un d’eux lui propose de changer de vie dans la grande ville ou devrait-elle choisir l’autre qui lui propose de continuer à vivre à la campagne.
Hémon est mort dans un accident de chemin de fer en 1913 et n’a pas pu constater à quel point son roman deviendrait populaire.
Ici, à Faded Page, nous sommes en mesure de vous présenter à la fois la version française et une traduction anglaise. Les livres traduits ne sont pas aussi faciles à publier car il faut tenir compte non seulement de l’auteur qui doit être dans le domaine public mais aussi du traducteur. Dans le cas présent, l’auteur original, Louis Hémon et le traducteur W. H. Blake (1861-1925). En outre, nous sommes également en mesure de présenter une version française illustrée puisque l’artiste Gérard Cochet (1888-1969) est également dans le domaine public.
La traduction en anglais comprend une introduction écrite par Blake. Il critique l’utilisation par Hémon des idiomes canadiens-français. Comme Hémon était originaire de France, il n’avait pas une compréhension totale de la version idiosyncrasique du français qui est parlé au Québec.
Help us add more public domain books for authors like Hémon by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 15, 2022:
In this article, we pay tribute to David Jones who passed away in early October 2022. David was a co-founder of Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC) which, with the aid of volunteers literally across the world, generates the eBooks we offer at FadedPage (FP) since 2012. David was always a passionate fan of books and wanted to support the digitization of Public Domain books for everyone to enjoy which was his impetus to create Distributed Proofreaders Canada back in 2007. It is one of the primary reasons he has been part of DPC’s hugely successful “save the books” campaign.
David had his hands in all aspects of both sites and was a brilliant, caring leader, kind, and always there for a friend. In his personal life, he was involved with various concerns dealing with publishing and finance, and he was a loving husband and father. In England, where he was born, he first learned to love books and he later emigrated to Canada and also became fluent in French.
We will mention just one of the many eBooks David had put together. The Georgian Bay was one of David’s favourites, and he had visited many places around the bay. For those not familiar with it, Georgian Bay is the northeastern arm of Lake Huron (one of the five Great Lakes), wholly in Ontario, Canada. It is famous for its islands, boat cruises, parks, fishing and numerous communities surrounding it, as well as its wonderful sunsets! The accompanying image is a depiction of Georgian Bay by Group of Seven artist Frederick Varley.
Many of us will very much feel David’s absence. Some of us interacted almost daily with him, while others knew him through his communications to all the members via our newsletter and forums. Your legacy, David, will live on to benefit readers of eBooks across the world! You will be missed.
October 1, 2022:
Léonise Valois était une journaliste et une poétesse canadienne-française. Elle est née dans une famille prospère de la banlieue de Vaudreuil-Dorion à l’ouest de Montréal. Bien que sa famille ne soit pas très aisée, c’est grâce à un riche cousin qu’elle et ses sœurs reçoivent une bonne éducation. Tôt dans sa vie, elle s’est intéressée à la poésie et a publié son premier texte en 1882. Son père tombe malade et meurt en 1898, ce qui l’oblige à trouver un emploi. Elle réussit à trouver un emploi de rédactrice de la page féminine d’un journal local. Ce n’était pas un emploi bien rémunéré mais il lui a permis d’écrire et elle a contribué à une rubrique, « Au coin du feu ». Elle continue à écrire des poèmes et, en 1910, elle publie un recueil de poèmes, Fleurs sauvages. Il s’agit du premier recueil entièrement consacré à la poésie d’une femme canadienne française. La poésie est d’inspiration romantique, à la fois lyrique et patriotique, et elle est bien accueillie à l’époque. Elle poursuit sa carrière en travaillant pour divers journaux et autres organismes, mais en 1931, elle subit un grave accident. Ses activités s’en trouvent réduites et elle meurt en 1936. Cependant, sa contribution la plus importante à l’histoire de la littérature et à l’histoire des femmes est qu’elle a été la première au Canada français à voir ses poèmes rassemblés dans un livre. Ainsi, malgré les obstacles familiaux et sociaux, et contre le modèle traditionnel qui limitait les femmes aux loisirs littéraires, elle a poursuivi son rêve et mérité, en tant que poète, le titre de femme de lettres qui lui était si cher.
A short biography in English is available on the author page.
We invite you to come and join us here at Faded Page and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 15, 2022:
Hulbert Footner (1879-1944) was a Canadian author of mystery and detective fiction. Born in Hamilton, Ontario he attended grade school in Manhattan, New York where his mother lived. Following grade school, he was self-educated and began initially writing poetry and plays and persuing his love of long-distance canoeing. After accepting a reporting job in 1906 on the Calgary Morning Albertan, he began a 3000-mile solo canoe journey exploring the northern part of the province, syndicating the story of his journey to Canadian newspapers.
He wrote many short stories and novels based on his early adventurous canoe voyages which were serialized in Cavalier, Western Story Magazine, Argosy, Munsey’s and Mystery magazines and then published later as novels such as Jack Chanty. His friend Christopher Morley, a writer of books and poetry, steered him past an overdose of northwestern stories into crime stories, adventure and romance. His most successful creation was the beautiful and brilliant Madame Rozika Storey and her plain assistant who explains the evolving solutions to her boss’ cases. These cases appeared in Argosy All-Story Weekly from 1922 through 1935 for a total of 30 stories. Footner is also known for his Amos Lee Mappin mystery series, with a New York mystery writer who is far less flamboyant than Madame Storey, and for a third Private Investigator series.
Here at Faded Page, we feature the Madame Storey series and Amos Mappin Mystery series as well as many other titles of adventure, crime and romance such as Jack Chanty, A Self-Made Thief, The Obeah Murders, and Sinfully Rich.
If you want to see more mysteries and adventure e-books like these on Faded Page, come and join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 1, 2022:
Nineteen Eight-Four was written in 1949 by George Orwell, a pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, and is considered a dystopian novel. It is widely considered one of the top 100 novels of all time. It may be one you studied in high school.
Orwell thought that placing the time-frame 35 years in the future would work. Maybe he was off, and it should have been another 35 years later instead. There are a number of aspects that are dealt with in the novel. One is continuous surveillance by the authorities—the people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan, “Big Brother is watching you”. Now we have cameras almost everywhere watching almost everything. Another is an unending war involving Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Now we have wars in one place or another, even if they’re not well publicized. How about the editing of history by the main character Winston Smith? Now we call it “Fake News”. How about Smith not being able to find razor blades and having his rations reduced? Now we call it supply-chain issues. Is the predicted past here now?
If you like this book and others by George Orwell that we have on our site, then consider helping us add more public domain books by proofreading a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 15, 2022:
Margaret Duley (1894-1968) was a Newfoundland writer. Born into a prosperous St. John’s family, she was surrounded by art and literature in her youth. Known by her nickname ‘Peg’, she was intelligent and witty and her parents encouraged her studies by sending her to school in England. World War I interrupted her studies and the war affected her family deeply. One of her brothers was killed fighting with the Newfoundland Regiment and another brother was severely wounded. The trauma of these events influenced her later writing. The death of her father in 1920 and the depression led to financial hardship which inspired her to start writing to supplement the family’s income. Her first novel, The Eyes of the Gull tells the story of a young woman struggling to survive in a remote outport settlement and yearning to escape to a more cultured place. Her novels often featured strong women living in Newfoundland outports. During the Second World War, she volunteered at a hostel in St. John’s that catered to servicemen who were stationed in the city. Her last book, The Caribou Hut is a history of the establishment during the turmoil of the times. Duley was afflicted by Parkinson’s Disease in the 1950s and she lost the ability to write. Her slow decline ended in 1968 with her death.
Duley was Newfoundland’s first novelist of repute and her four novels earned her (and Newfoundland) international recognition. In 1974 the Newfoundland Writer’s Guild established the Margaret Duley Writing Award in her honour and in 1976 she was designated a Person of National Historical Significance by the Government of Canada.
Help us add more public domain books for authors like Duley by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 1, 2022:
In commemoration of the recent receipt of images from the James Webb Space Telescope—just 3 weeks ago, on July 11, 2022—this short article is about William Herschel, a German-born astronomer who constructed his first telescope in 1774. He spent many years carrying out sky surveys documenting thousands of objects. In March 1781, he discovered a new object which, after weeks of verification and consultation with other astronomers, was determined to be a planet. The new planet was given the name Uranus; Uranus was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity. Herschel died in 1822 (age 83) after many more years of astronomical investigations.
Faded Page currently has two biographies about Herschel along with another three on the subject of Astronomy.
The image above is a lithograph by A. Diethe showing William Herschel working with his sister, astronomer Caroline Herschel.
If you want to see more eBooks about astronomy and other sciences on Faded Page, come and join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 15, 2022:
Martha Ostenso was a Canadian writer. Ostenso (pronounced like Austen + so) was born in Norway but her family emigrated to North America when she was a child. They eventually settled in Manitoba where she attended school. While studying at the University of Manitoba, she met her future husband and author Douglas Durkin (Durkin’s books are in the process of becoming Faded Page ebooks). Durkin, who was married, became estranged from his wife and children and chose to form a close personal relationship with his former student. Together they moved to New York where he began teaching at Columbia University.
During her relationship with Durkin, Ostenso began writing novels. Her first work, Wild Geese, published in 1925, won a prize for best first novel from Curtis Brown worth $13,500. It also won the Dodd Mead First Novel Award. The story is about life on a farm in Manitoba. The image of a lone wild goose in flight is a metaphor for the feeling of loneliness that some of the characters feel in their remote rural isolation. A film version of the book was made in 1927.
She continued to write novels and short stories, a mixture of fiction and romance. Several of the books were written in collaboration with Durkin but only her name is in the book credits. At Faded Page, we host 21 of her books and more are on the way.
Help us add more public domain books for Ostenso, Durkin and other authors by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 1, 2022:
Happy Canada Day from all of us at Faded Page and Distributed Proofreaders Canada!
Our final volume of The Chronicles of Canada has now been posted to Faded Page, just over 14 years since we began the 32-volume series, our first ÜberProject. The series was edited by George McKinnon Wrong and H. H. Langton with each volume written by various authors. Some of the authors are well-known Canadians such as Stephen Leacock, Sir Joseph Pope, Agnes C. Laut, and the final author to enter the public domain, W. Stewart Wallace.
The series, first published in 1914/1915, approaches Canada’s early history in a narrative and romantic fashion covering the major events and figures of Canadian history from the earliest beginnings up until Post-Confederation Canada (the early 1910’s). Written for popular reading, it sets forth in historic continuity the principal events and movements in Canada: from the original aborigines to the Norse Voyages, then to European exploration and settlements, to the Railway Builders and finally to the early years of Confederation and the Dominion. The volumes also include many illustrations and maps.
The Chronicles of Canada is one of our Special Collections. If you like what we do and want to see more of it on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 15, 2022:
We now have two versions of this lovely book by Felix Salten (a pseudonym for Siegmund Salzmann) on Faded Page: one in the original German, Bambi: Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde, and one in English, a translation by Whittaker Chambers, Bambi (aka Bambi, A Life in the Woods).
This is the story of a young roe deer living in the forests and follows the events of Bambi’s first year as he grows and matures. Bambi’s life begins happily; there are forest animals to play with: the young friendly hare, the chattery squirrel, the noisy screech owl, and Bambi’s twin cousins, frail Gobo and beautiful Faline. But winter comes, and Bambi learns that the woods hold danger and things he doesn’t understand. The first snowfall makes food hard to find for all the animals.
Then there is Man. He comes to the forest with weapons that can wound, or kill, an animal. Bambi learns sorrow at a young age when he loses his various animal friends and his mother to death. But eventually he grows up into a handsome stag.
Excerpts gleaned from the Wikipedia article about this book:
- Felix Salten, himself an avid hunter, penned Bambi: Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde after World War I, targeting an adult audience.
- In his Foreword of the English translation by Whittaker Chambers, John Galsworthy called it a “delicious book—delicious not only for children but for those who are no longer so fortunate” and a “little masterpiece” that shows a “delicacy of perception and essential truth”. He observed that while reading the galley proof of the novel while crossing the English Channel, he, his wife, and his nephew read each page in turn over the course of three hours in “silent absorption.”
- Over 200 editions of the novel have been published, with almost 100 German and English editions alone, and numerous translations and reprintings in over 30 languages. It has also been published in a variety of formats, including printed medium, audiobook, Braille, and e-book formats.
There have been numerous adaptations of the story in books for children, live theatre and ballet as well as animated and live-action films, all in various languages. The Disney animated film adapted the story considerably (including the addition of a rabbit “Thumper” and a skunk “Flower”) to make it less “grim and somber” for children.
First published in 1923, it has been argued by liberal critics that Bambi was one of the first environmental novels.
If you want to see more books like these added to Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. We reserve “easy to proof” projects, such as the English version of Bambi, for our beginner proofers and offer the help and guidance of experienced mentors. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 1, 2022:
In many countries, Pride Month is commemorated in June. Pride Month celebrates the LGBTQ+ community and recognizes the contributions of those individuals. Faded Page also recognizes the contributions of the LGBTQ community and so has a genre tag for LGBTQ eBooks. While the tag currently includes 8 titles related to LGBTQ themes, elements or issues, there will be more in the future.
Faded Page has eBooks by over 25 recognized LGBTQ authors including Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. eBooks by all the authors cover a very wide range of topics, both fiction and non-fiction. As well there are another 20 titles, by various LGBTQ authors—including Maurice by E.M. Forster—in process at our companion site: Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
If you want to see more eBooks by LGBTQ authors on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 15, 2022:
In honour of Dashiell Hammett’s birthday on May 27, we’re highlighting his 1929 novel Red Harvest. This is the first of two novels featuring the Continental Op, a detective with the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco (modelled on the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, where Hammett had worked about a decade before). The Continental Op, whose name is never revealed, has been sent to Personville to meet with Donald Willsson, the publisher of the main newspaper in town. However, this town is riddled with corruption, and Willsson is murdered while on his way to meet with the Op. The Op soon discovers, in his quest to solve the murder, that Personville’s nickname of Poisonville is well earned, and that digging up rocks to expose the creatures lurking below brings more death and destruction. You can read both Red Harvest and its sequel, The Dain Curse, here on Faded Page.
Hammett’s reputation as one of the founders of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction is well earned. If you enjoy this kind of novel and want to see more of it on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 1, 2022:
Gwethalyn Graham was a Canadian writer. She was born in Toronto, Ontario to a prosperous middle class family. Her maternal grandfather was John Price-Brown who wrote several historical novels (we have them here at Faded Page!). Her education featured the prestigious private school of Havergal College in Toronto and the Pensionnat des Allières in Switzerland.
Graham started writing as a teenager but she was dissatisfied with her work and destroyed several manuscripts. She published her first novel in 1938. Swiss Sonata is based on her experience at the Swiss school. The book is about the young women students and teachers on the eve of World War II. The book won the Governor General’s fiction award in 1938. She followed with a better novel, Earth and High Heaven, about a wealthy Protestant woman from Montreal who wants to marry a Jewish lawyer from Ontario. The issue of anti-Semitism was rife in Canada at the time. Again she based it on her own experience when she wanted to marry a Jewish-Canadian lawyer. She won the Governor General’s award in 1944 for the book. She also produced a non-fiction work, Dear Enemies: A Dialogue on French and English Canada (it was co-written with Solange Chaput-Roland who is not in the public domain).
Graham worked as a journalist and she was a frequent contributor to magazines. She died of a brain tumour at the age of 52.
Help us add more public domain books like these by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 15, 2022:
“Mr. Ed”, a short story first published by Liberty magazine in the United States in 1937, was written by Walter Brooks, who also did the Freddy the Pig book series.
Mister Ed was also an American television situation comedy featuring Connie Hines and Alan Young, as seen in the photo above. There were 143 episodes, filmed in black and white, produced in the period 1961-1966.
Wilbur Pope was a small quiet man in the advertising business. He bought a horse named Ed. It was just a horse. But Mr. Pope enjoyed jogging him around on Sunday mornings and talking to him, and Ed seemed to understand. One time, while out on a ride, Mr. Pope started to sing. Ed looked around at him a couple times but Mr. Pope just smiled and patted his neck and said “You’re a good scout Ed,” and he went on singing. Then Ed turned around again and said “O for Pete’s sake Wilb shut up!” Once Wilbur regained his senses, they had a long talk and the main thing Ed told him was that animals can talk, only they almost never let humans know it because they’d just get a lot of extra work shoved on them.
The various stories typically involve Wilbur or Ed getting into mischief or trouble of some sort. While Ed didn’t directly talk to others, some heard him through hedges, or thought it was Wilbur. Things end up working out, sometimes for the better, and the two go off for a beer, which they both enjoy greatly!
The stories may cause you to wince or groan, but along the way there is a humorous side, and things generally work out for Wilbur and Mr. Ed. Also, Mr. Ed’s ability to talk was never explained!
We have 16 of the 23 books and they can be found here. If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 1, 2022:
April marks the 26th anniversary of National Poetry Month in Canada and the U.S. celebrating the importance of poets and poetry.
The first-ever written piece of poetry, dating back to 2100 B.C., is the “Epic of Gilgamesh” as it tells the epic tale of a hero in Mesopotamia. Over time, poetry forms evolved into ballads to tell history, odes to glorify events and persons or tell stories of victories of war, and other forms such as haiku and the modern poetry forms of today.
Here at Faded Page, we have over 400 titles of poetry including The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels by Alexander Heidel and works of some well-known poets such as T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Stephen Vincent Benét. Canadian poetry is represented by E. J. Pratt’s narrative poem Towards the Last Spike, Lt.-Col. John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields And Other Poems, Mary Electa Adams’ From Distant Shores, and Canadian-born Arthur Stringer’s New York Nocturnes. Other eBooks can be found by browsing under the subject tag poetry.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 15, 2022:
Math enthusiasts around the world celebrate Pi Day on March 14, often by enjoying a slice of pie at 1:59pm. The date and time are chosen to match the first digits, 3.14159, of the numerical approximation of the mathematical constant pi.
The first recorded algorithm for computing an approximation to pi was provided by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, and it is a geometric approach involving circles and polygons. To celebrate Archimedes’s achievement, consider reading “Science from Syracuse”, a short story by John Russell Fearn, first published in 1941 in the American pulp magazine Science Fiction. In this story, Archimedes travels in a time machine from Ancient Greece to 1960 New York City. His arrival affects the world in an unexpected and significant way.
John Russell Fearn (1908-1960) wrote a great many stories under his own name as well as several different pseudonyms, including Polton Cross which he used for “Science from Syracuse”. You can find a number of his stories here on Faded Page.
Help us add more public domain works like these by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 1, 2022:
To celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8, we are introducing a new series on Canadian women writers. Many of our readers are familiar with writers such as Lucy Maud Montgomery and Mazo de la Roche. However, we would like to introduce you to others that are lesser known but worthy of attention.
Mary Esther Miller MacGregor (“Essie” to her friends and family) was a Canadian author of novels and biographies, many of which reflected her interest in the history of Canada. Born Mary Esther Miller in a farming community near Orillia, Ontario, she started her career as a teacher. She began contributing a column to a magazine called Teacher’s Monthly but she quit soon after as she wanted to pursue her passion of writing stories. Her first book was ready to publish in 1905 but she found out that her name, Esther Miller, was already in use by an American author so she chose the pen-name, Marian Keith.
She married Reverend Donald MacGregor of the United Church in 1909 and soon became friends with Lucy Maud Montgomery who was also married to a minister. Her husband moved regularly due to his job so she ended up spending time in several Ontario communities including Toronto, Orillia, London and Owen Sound. Her experience during this time provided source material for her stories. In The Silver Maple, published in 1906 and set on the shores of Lake Simcoe, she portrayed social issues at the time, rivalries between clans of English, Scotch and Irish immigrants. She showed the breakdown of these tensions with the children who played with each other at school, who did not recognize these differences.
As a Watered Garden features a single woman who inherits a farm on Georgian Bay. MacGregor wrote 17 novels during her life and Faded Page currently hosts nine of her books.
She also co-wrote a book with Montgomery and Mabel Burns McKinley called Courageous Women, which according to the dust jacket has “inspiring biographies of girls who grew to be women of courage and achievement.” Unfortunately this book is unavailable as McKinley’s work is not in the public domain.
Macgregor’s books were popular at the time and she achieved fame for her ability to convert complex themes into simple storylines. She has been grouped with Montgomery and Nellie McClung as contributors to the revival of Canadian writing by women.
Help us add more public domain books like these by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 15, 2022:
There were 38 books about “William” published between 1922–1970 by English writer Richmal Crompton Lamburn (1890-1969). The first book is Just William, and all the others have titles containing the word “William”, so here at Faded Page we refer to the entire series as Just William. We have only a few eBooks from this series posted so far (and they can be found here) but more are on their way!
The books chronicle the adventures of the unruly 11 year-old English schoolboy William Brown as a series of short stories in each book. They’ve been so popular that a 1948 movie and a few TV shows were made, and a fan website, The Just William Society, has been created.
Most stories start with William getting some idea that starts him on some usually mischievous but typically well-meaning adventure. A number of them involve three of his friends, who as a group call themselves the Outlaws. The children’s dialog uses a form of slang, which some people may find irritating. While William usually has good intentions, the stories develop so that he runs into problems caused by himself, though he may not see them as such.
The stories may cause you to wince or groan, but along the way, there is a humourous side, and things generally work out for William.
If you like what we do here at Faded Page and would like to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 1, 2022:
Valentine’s Day originated when Pope Gelasius I in A.D. 496 established February 14 as a Christian feast day honoring Saint Valentine of Rome who died on that date in A.D. 269. Through folk traditions, the day has become a cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance, love, and courtship throughout the world.
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we feature two books on courtship and courtly love.
Written by French writer Armand Silvestre, Le Petit Art d’Aimer is a guide to the intricate world of 19th century seduction and love. Delightfully illustrated by Lucien Métivet, it is filled with good humor, astute observation, and thoughtful advice.
In C. S. Lewis’s The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, we have a discussion of the theory of courtly love and how the idea of love changed from the days of the French troubadours to the days of Elizabethan England with texts ranging from Chaucer to Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.
We here at Faded Page and Distributed Proofreaders Canada thank you for your support of our work! If you like what we do here and would like to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site here.
La Saint-Valentin
La Saint-Valentin est née lorsque le pape Gélase Ier, en 496, a fait du 14 février une fête chrétienne en l’honneur de saint Valentin de Rome, mort à cette date en 269. Grâce aux traditions populaires, cette journée est devenue une célébration culturelle, religieuse et commerciale du romantisme, de l’amour et de la séduction dans le monde entier.
Dans l’esprit de la Saint-Valentin, nous vous présentons deux livres sur la séduction et l’amour courtois.
Écrit par l’écrivain français Armand Silvestre, Le Petit Art d’Aimer est un guide du monde complexe de la séduction et de l’amour au XIXe siècle. Délicieusement illustré par Lucien Métivet, il est rempli de bonne humeur, d’observations astucieuses et de conseils judicieux.
Dans The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, C. S. Lewis traite de la théorie de l’amour courtois et de la façon dont l’idée de l’amour a évolué de l’époque des troubadours français à celle de l’Angleterre élisabéthaine, avec des textes allant de Chaucer à The Faerie Queene de Spenser.
Nous, à Faded Page et Distributed Proofreaders Canada, vous remercions de votre soutien pour notre travail! Si vous aimez ce que nous faisons ici et que vous souhaitez nous aider à ajouter encore plus de livres du domaine public sur le site, venez nous rejoindre et relire quelques pages. Pour plus d’informations sur le bénévolat, consultez notre site complémentaire ici.
January 15, 2022:
John Price-Brown (1844-1938) was an English born Canadian author. His family emigrated to Upper Canada when he was a child. He studied at the University of Toronto to become a medical doctor. He was well known in Toronto as a nose and throat specialist which led to the publication of his first book in 1900, Diseases of the Nose and Throat.
He began to write novels after this using a pen-name, Eric Bohn. In his later life, progressive blindness forced him to retire from medicine and also inhibited his writing. He still managed to write five historical novels, four of which are available on Faded Page.
In particular is his tale about the Upper Canada Rebellion (depicted in the image above) in 1837, entitled, The Mac’s of ’37. It achieved considerable popularity at the time of publication and is rated in present-day histories of Canadian literature as one of the best books of Canadian vintage dealing with a purely Canadian topic.
His final book, Laura, the Undaunted tells the story of Laura Secord. The book details her life culminating in her famous participation in the War of 1812.
Help us add more public domain books like these by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Thanks to the Dusty Bookcase for research concerning the author.January 1, 2022:
Facts for Everybody: An Encyclopædia of Useful Knowledge, published in 1863, promises in its preface, “Facts from all subjects and for everybody,” covering science, cooking, etiquette, arts, commerce, games and more. The book is richly illustrated and includes diagrams showing, for example, how to carve a pheasant and how to detect arsenic in a quantity of fluid.
As we celebrate the start of 2022, we can find in this volume some relevant facts. The month of January was named after the double-faced deity Janus, who looks both into the old and new year, and the ancient Romans held festivals and gave gifts to friends and associates during this month. In England, New Year’s Day is often celebrated with the passing round of the “wassail bowl” containing a festive beverage. This is often accompanied by a wassail song and much merriment.
We here at Faded Page and Distributed Proofreaders Canada wish you a Happy New Year and thank you for your support of our work! If you like what we do here and would like to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site here.
December 15, 2021:
In an imaginary conversation between the reader and himself at the end of Crime at Christmas, C. H. B. Kitchin writes that the detective story appeals because it is “a study in the behaviour of normal people in abnormal circumstances.” Perhaps this is why murder mysteries set in cozy, traditional Christmas settings are so popular.
This novel, set in an English country house over the Christmas holidays, is the second of a series that features amateur sleuth Malcom Warren. Other books from this series available here at Faded Page include Death of My Aunt and Death of His Uncle.
Clifford Henry Benn Kitchin (1895–1967) is best known for the Malcom Warren novels but he had written a number of other well-regarded novels, as well as collections of poetry. Kitchin was also known as a gifted pianist and chess player.
Other Christmas-themed mysteries you may want to investigate this holiday season include the novels An English Murder by Cyril Hare and Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon, and the Albert Campion short story Word in Season by Margery Allingham.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and would like to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 1, 2021:
We close out our series on the ten provinces and three territories of Canada with a look at the province of Quebec.
Quebec is the largest Canadian province by area and second largest by population, with Montreal as the largest city and Quebec City as the provincial capital. Originally established by the French as New France, Quebec became a British colony after the Seven Years’ War and part of Lower Canada. French is the official language and the province is well known for its maple syrup, ice hockey sports teams, timber and mining, and space technology industries.
The eBooks in FadedPage.com mentioning Quebec are about its history or historical fiction within the province. You can see the whole list here.
Books about the history of Quebec include French Canada and the St. Lawrence, Montreal: Seaport and City, and The ‘Patriotes’ of ’37: A Chronicle of the Lower Canadian Rebellion.
Fiction books include two Governor General’s Literary Award titles: Three Came to Ville Marie, and Trente Arpents. Other good fiction titles include: Shadows on the Rock and The Black Hunter: A Novel of Old Quebec.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Le Québec est la plus grande province du Canada par sa superficie et la deuxième par sa population, avec Montréal comme plus grande ville et Québec comme capitale provinciale. Établi à l’origine par les Français sous le nom de Nouvelle-France, le Québec est devenu une colonie britannique après la guerre de Sept Ans et a été intégré au Bas-Canada. Le français est la langue officielle et la province est bien connue pour son sirop d’érable, ses équipes sportives de hockey sur glace, ses industries du bois et des mines et de la technologie spatiale.
Les livres électroniques de FadedPage.com qui mentionnent le Québec ont trait à son histoire ou à la fiction historique dans cette province. Vous pouvez voir la liste complète ici.
Les livres sur l’histoire du Québec incluent French Canada and the St. Lawrence, Montreal: Seaport and City, et The ‘Patriotes’ of ’37: A Chronicle of the Lower Canadian Rebellion.
Parmi ses livres de fiction, on compte deux titres des Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général : Three Came to Ville Marie, et Trente Arpents. D’autres titres de fiction de qualité comprennent : Shadows on the Rock et The Black Hunter: A Novel of Old Quebec.
Si vous aimez ce que nous faisons ici sur Faded Page et que vous voulez nous aider à ajouter encore plus de livres du domaine public sur le site, venez nous rejoindre et relire quelques pages. Pour plus d’informations sur le bénévolat, consultez notre site complémentaire, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 15, 2021:
This is another of our continuing special series of texts covering the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. Today we’re looking into Ontario.
Ontario was formerly known as Upper Canada and one of the four provinces that created Canada in 1867. It contains both the capital of Canada (Ottawa) and the capital of Ontario (Toronto), which is also Canada’s largest city by population. Ontario is the most populous province of Canada with almost 40% of the country’s population.
The eBooks in FadedPage.com mentioning Ontario typically are about its history or travel within the province. You can see the whole list here.
Some of the historical ones are: History of Toronto and County of York, Ontario and The Story of the Counties of Ontario.
For travel check out: The National Parks in Ontario: A story of islands and shorelines and The Queen’s Hotel Traveller’s Guide. The image above is of Flowerpot Island, described in the first of these two books.
For a light read, a popular eBook is Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 1, 2021:
On November 11, we will be commemorating Remembrance Day in Canada and Armistice Day in other countries. Here at Faded Page, we have a number of books that tell the story of the Great War. One is a collection of poems, Sorrow of War, by Louis Golding (1895-1958).
In his poems, Golding conveys the thoughts and emotions of the soldiers in battle, as well as those of their loved ones waiting for them or grieving at home. In composing the poems, Golding drew from his own experiences as part of an ambulance unit in World War I.
Sorrow of War was one of Golding’s first works. He went on to become a prolific novelist and even worked on some screenplays. Though his work is not so well known today, Golding’s novels, many of which explored Jewish themes, were very popular during his lifetime. We have a number of Golding’s works and they can be found here.
Help us add more public domain books like these by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Photo credit: Tijl Vercaemer, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
October 15, 2021:
Hallowe’en (a contraction of “All Hallows’ evening”) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows’ Day. It begins the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. Hallowe’en activities might include trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, telling spooky stories and watching horror movies. We have some scary horror short stories to suggest for this Hallowe’en.
“Pigeons from Hell”, written by Robert E. Howard, is an old haunted house story with plenty of gore and blood, suspense, voodoo, witchcraft, and revenge. The title comes from an image in Howard’s grandmother’s ghost stories of a deserted plantation mansion haunted by pigeons. According to Rod Serling and Stephen King, it is one of the most popular horror stories written and was the basis for a 1961 episode of Boris Karloff’s Thriller television series.
Robert Howard wrote other horror short stories for Hallowe’en reading as well, such as “Skull-Face”, a story about a man who has recurring dreams of something he calls “Skull Face” and is puzzled about their meaning.
Another horror story writer, Henry Kuttner, offers several horror short stories for Hallowe’en reading such as: “The Graveyard Rats”, where a gruesome fate befalls the old cemetery caretaker in the burrows beneath the graves, “It Walks By Night”, a blood-chilling narrative of a ghastly horror that stalks through the crypts beneath the old graveyard, and “The Watcher at the Door”, a story of horror lurking in the dreams.
We also have eight H.P. Lovecraft short stories including “The Outsider”, “The Horror at Red Hook”, “Cool Air”, and “The Cats of Ulthar”.
Many more horror books and short stories can be found here at Faded Page by clicking on the horror subject tag. Help us add even more public domain books by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 1, 2021:
Are you a James Bond fan? Then you probably know that the newest film No Time To Die is coming out this month in North America.
Here at FadedPage.com, we have 15 of the James Bond books by Ian Fleming. If you’ve read them, you’ll find the earlier films aren’t too far off the original books, but in some cases the later ones only share the title and nothing much about the story.
If you haven’t read the books then this is a great opportunity to do so and picture them in your mind! Feel free to read them in any order you prefer as each book pretty much stands on its own and there isn’t much overlap.
You can find them all the James Bond books here. Help us add more public domain books like these by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 15, 2021:
The 2021 Canadian federal election will be taking place on September 20, and at that time, the next Prime Minister will be determined. This is a good time to look back at some of Canada’s past Prime Ministers and the impact they have had on the nation.
The Special Collection: The Chronicles of Canada includes a wealth of information about Canada’s early history. Volume 28, The Fathers of Confederation, A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion talks about how Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Charles Tupper, the first and sixth Prime Ministers, along with others, brought about the confederacy of Canada.
Volume 29 of this collection, The Day of Sir John Macdonald: A Chronicle of The First Prime Minister of the Dominion, is focussed specifically on Macdonald. Volume 30, The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier: A Chronicle of Our Own Time tells the story of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, seventh Prime Minister, depicted on the magazine cover shown above.
Another interesting item in our library is The Message of the Carillon And Other Addresses, a collection of speeches by William Lyon Mackenzie King, tenth Prime Minister, who served three non-consecutive terms.
Many more books on Canada’s political history are available here at Faded Page. Help us add even more public domain books by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 1, 2021:
The start of September means “back to school” for many children and young adults around the world. This is a good time to reminisce about the joys and challenges of one’s school days by revisiting some of the popular school series that some of our Faded Page readers may have read in their youth. Other readers may be discovering these series for the first time and learning about what school was like in earlier times and different places.
Here are a few of the series that you can find on Faded Page:
- The St. Clare’s series by beloved English author Enid Blyton starts with The Twins at St. Clare’s, featuring sisters Patricia and Isabel O’Sullivan. A Japanese anime adaptation, Mischievous Twins: The Tales of St. Clare’s, was produced in 1991.
- The Abbey Series was written by Elsie Jeannette Dunkerley writing as Elsie J. Oxenham. It is set in a fictional boarding school in the west of England and one of its major themes is folk dancing, which is described throughout the books. The series starts with The Girls of the Hamlet Club but the main characters of the series are introduced in the second book, The Abbey Girls.
- Sports enthusiasts will enjoy Ralph Henry Barbour’s Football Eleven and Yardley Hall series. Each book in the former series features a character playing one of the eleven (American) football positions, while the latter series features different sports, such as cross-country running in Winning His “Y”: A Story of School Athletics.
You can find a list of our school stories here. Our school series are a work-in-progress, as we continue to work at completing various series and adding new ones. You can help us in our endeavour by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For more information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 15, 2021:
In our continuing series spotlighting provinces and territories of Canada, we focus today on the Northwest Territories, located between the Yukon Territory to the west and Nunavut to the east.
With a population of a little over 45,000, the Northwest Territories is a massive land mass of 1.1 million square kilometers, the size of Spain, Portugal and France combined. Its primary industry is mining: gold, diamonds, natural gas and petroleum.
We have a few eBooks about the Northwest Territories related to the early prospecting days. Canadian author and journalist W.H.P. Jarvis who wrote books on the Yukon gold rush also wrote Trails and Tales in Cobalt with some true stories about prospecting in the Northwest Territories. Another Yukon gold prospecting storywriter, James Hendryx, offers Beyond the Outposts, a story about gold prospecting, bootlegging, and the Mounted Police in the NWT.
Help us add more public domain books to Faded Page by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For more information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 1, 2021:
In our continuing series spotlighting provinces and territories of Canada, we focus today on Saskatchewan. As the middle Prairie Province, located between the provinces of Alberta on the west and Manitoba to the east, it is the only Canadian province whose boundaries are formed by lines of latitude and longitude versus natural features. With a population of approximately 1.1 million people, its two leading industries are mining and agriculture. With over ten percent of the land mass being occupied by lakes and rivers, fishing is also a major visitor attraction.
We have a few eBooks about Saskatchewan highlighting the prairie life and fishing. Sinclair Lewis wrote Mantrap, a fictional story based on a personal fishing trip on the Mantrap River in Saskatchewan. Prescott of Saskatchewan by Harold Bindloss is a story about life on the prairies. Canadian journalist and historian Howard Kennedy wrote The Book of the West, a historical telling of the development of the western provinces in the 1880’s and the North-West Rebellion of 1885.
Help us add more public domain books to Faded Page by volunteering to proofread a few pages! For more information, go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 15, 2021:
The following was written by Iona, a long-time volunteer with Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
How many of you are old enough to remember July 20, 1969? That is the date when humans first set foot on the Moon.
Are you old enough to remember the beginning of the “space race” between Russia (then part of the Soviet Union) and the United States? That “race” started in 1955 ... 66 years ago ... and continues today though with more collaboration and with other countries as well with their own space programs.
I was 5 1/2 years old when Sputnik was launched in October 1957; so while I don’t remember that specific event, I grew up during the early years of the “space race”. I was 9 years old when, first, Yuri Gagarin and, then, Alan Shepard flew their first orbital flights in the spring of 1961. Those were incredible, awe-inspiring events; never to be forgotten.
I was 17 when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon. My whole family sat and watched the lunar landing--we were on a camping vacation, but rented a hotel room--it was history in the making! We were not going to miss such an important event even if it was on a poor resolution Black & White TV. The moon landing is an event that will, should, never be forgotten.
As I looked through the pictures in the HTML version of this eBook, I remembered those years of triumph for all the successful missions and heartache for those that died: Russian cosmonauts as well as American astronauts.
If you remember the actual landing on the Moon--you are probably a senior like me (or getting to that age milestone)--show the eBook to your children, your grand-children, tell them what you remember of those incredible years when humans first went into space; when the Moon became something more than another light in the sky.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 1, 2021:
This year’s Canada Day celebrations on July 1 may be more subdued than usual because of the pandemic. However, Canadians can still go outdoors and enjoy the beauty of the landscape. Before embarking on a trek into the forest, consider browsing through Canadian Wild Flowers, written by Catharine Parr Traill (1802-1899) and beautifully illustrated by artist Agnes Dunbar Moodie Fitzgibbon (1833-1913). Published in 1868, Canadian Wild Flowers is considered one of the first serious Canadian botanical works. It describes thirty different wildflowers displayed together in ten colour plates. The illustration above shows the Harebell (Campánula Rotundifòlia), the Showy Lady’s Slipper (Cypripèdium Spectàbile) and the Wild Orange Red Lily (Lílium Philadélphicum).
Here at Faded Page, we have a number of books by Catharine Parr Traill who wrote extensively about everyday life in early Canada. Traill comes from a family of writers. Her sister Susanna Moodie, well known for Roughing it in the Bush, is the mother of Fitzgibbon, the illustrator of Canadian Wild Flowers.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 15, 2021:
Who are our most popular authors on Faded Page? It is easy to find out by looking at our page showing the top downloads by author. As this article is being written, these are our top ten authors, with the number of downloads since Dec. 17, 2015 in parentheses. Enid Blyton, whose photograph is shown above, leads the pack with almost 300,000 downloads!
- Blyton, Enid (297,503)
- Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples) (212,289)
- Hemingway, Ernest (178,248)
- Fleming, Ian (132,625)
- Sayers, Dorothy L. (126,551)
- Elles, Dora Amy (93,601)
- Faulkner, William (84,687)
- Smith, Cecil Louis Troughton (76,495)
- Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud) (75,493)
- Huxley, Aldous Leonard (64,832)
Are some of the names not familiar to you? You may know Dora Amy Elles as Patricia Wentworth, author of the Miss Silver mysteries, and Cecil Louis Troughton Smith as C. S. Forester, author of the Horatio Hornblower series. You can also see a list of our top downloaded books.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 1, 2021:
This is another of our continuing special series of texts covering the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. Today we’re looking into New Brunswick.
New Brunswick is south of Quebec, part of the Maritimes, and gateway to PEI and Nova Scotia. It’s a great province of scenery, history, fishing and seafood. For scenery we have a travel eBook called Rocks and Scenery of Fundy National Park, Fundy National Park being the home of the highest tides in the world.
Historically, New Brunswick was one of the four provinces during Confederation to form Canada (the other three being Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia). This story is part of the eBook The Fighting-Slogan by H. A. Cody. Another aspect of history in New Brunswick is the United Empire Loyalists, as described in The United Empire Loyalists: A Chronicle of the Great Migration by W. Stewart Wallace and The King’s Arrow: A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists by H. A. Cody.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 15, 2021:
In our continuing series spotlighting provinces and territories of Canada, we focus today on the Yukon Territory, located north of the province of British Columbia and east of the U.S. state of Alaska.
With a population of a little over 42,000 living in an area of 482,443 square kilometers, the Yukon Territory has plenty of room for its two biggest industries: mining and tourism. Gold miners started arriving in the 1870’s, and the Gold Rush of 1897 put Yukon on the map. Mining of lead, zinc, silver, gold, and copper continue as the number one industry. The territory is also known for its outdoor tourism activities including: dog sledding, ice fishing, hunting, hiking and canoeing, and watching the aurora borealis night sky from August to April.
We have a few eBooks about the Yukon, all related to the gold rush era. Canadian author Hiram Alfred Cody gives us The Frontiersman: A Tale of the Yukon while James B. Hendryx writes our two Black John books Raw Gold and Black John of Halfaday Creek. W.H.P. Jarvis specifically writes The Great Gold Rush: A Tale of the Klondike. Other books about the Yukon are also here including Robert Service’s book of poems about the Yukon and the challenges of everyday life entitled Bar-Room Ballads.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Photo source: departurestravel.com
May 1, 2021:
Did you know we have many titles here at Faded Page about the Greeks? Let’s do a deep dive into all things Greek and check out our subject categories, Greek, Greece and Greek Philosophy, that cover Greek places, people and, most importantly, Greek drama.
For travelers, we have The Acropolis and Its Museum in two volumes, along with Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way, an interpretation of Greek life and civilization, Greek literature, philosophy and art. A good grounding in Greek mythology can be found in the first book of Bullfinch’s Mythology.
For students and schools, we have Lucian’s Dialogues Prepared for Schools with Short Notes in Greek by W.H.D. Rouse and also Rouse’s literal prose translation of the epic Homer: The Iliad.
For those interested in Greek drama, be it tragedy or just drama, we have 5 titles from Aeschylus including The Eumenides, Prometheus Bound, and The Persians, the oldest surviving Greek tragedy. We also have 5 titles from Euripides including Medea and his most famous tragedy, Bacchae. Sophocles is well represented with The Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus.
These are just a few of the titles we have about Greeks and Greek drama and literature. If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 15, 2021:
This is another of our continuing special series of texts covering the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. Today we’re looking into Nova Scotia.
Nova Scotia is south of New Brunswick and part of the Maritimes. It is a great province of scenery, history, fishing and seafood.
For scenery and history, we have a travel eBook called Cape Breton Highlands National Park--where the mountains meet the sea. Cape Breton is in the northeastern corner of Nova Scotia and is well known for the beautiful Cabot Trail scenery and Alexander Graham Bell’s summer home, Beinn Bhreagh, where he worked on numerous inventions.
There are a number of historical eBooks, of which just a couple include The Great Fortress: A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 and Old Province Tales.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Photo: View of Louisbourg in 1758 by Pierre-Charles Canot.
April 1, 2021:
This is one of the early stories about “Billy the Kid” (born Henry McCarty in late 1859)—also known as William H. Bonney—reportedly told by witnesses claiming to have known him. Opinions as to the accuracy of this book and others are disputed as there is little solid evidence to support the events. The “Kid” was supposed to have killed eight men—starting in 1877 when he was 18—before he was finally shot and killed at the age of 21 in July 1881.
Many depictions of him in popular culture have varied from a notorious, cold-blooded murderer to a hero fighting for justice. This book shows him somewhere in the middle. He tried to protect those people who had befriended him and killed those that he considered his enemies, specifically, those who had killed his friends.
Whether myth or fact, this story along with other early stories and newspaper reports have become the basis for dozens of films (from 1911 to 2019), comics and other novels, music, stage and radio plays, television shows and even video games!
Walter Noble Burns was a writer of Western history and an author of Western American legends such as Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and Joaquin Murrieta. He has also been called an American Mythmaker. The Saga of Billy the Kid is one of his most notable.
There are currently two more of Burns’ Western fiction books in production at Distributed Proofreaders Canada. Please visit us there if you would like to join us in our efforts to add more public domain books to Faded Page.
March 15, 2021:
This is another of our continuing special series of texts covering the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. Today we’re looking into Prince Edward Island, also known as PEI.
PEI is, no surprise, an island and is east of New Brunswick and part of the Maritimes. Until 1997, it could only be reached by boat or airplane. Starting in 1993 and completed in 1997, the Confederation Bridge now allows vehicle travel between the mainland and the island. The Confederation of Canada took place here at Charlottetown, but PEI did not become part of Canada at that time.
We have a few eBooks specifically about PEI. We have a travel eBook, Prince Edward Island National Park: The Living Sands by David M. Baird, and a history eBook, History of Prince Edward Island by Duncan Campbell.
All the other PEI related eBooks are written by the famous L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery. It all started with Anne of Green Gables and the rest revolve around her or her PEI neighbourhood. They helped bring notoriety to Prince Edward Island!
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Photo credit: Andrea Schaffer from Sydney, Australia - Argyle Shore Provincial Park.
March 1, 2021:
International Women’s Day is on March 8, and a great way to celebrate women’s achievements is to read a work by one of the many women authors featured on our site. The IWD theme for 2021 is “Choose to Challenge”. One author who chose to challenge the norms of her time is Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).
Woolf’s extended essay, A Room of One’s Own, published in 1929 and based on lectures she had given at colleges associated with the University of Cambridge, is a well-known and important feminist text. One of its themes is the argument that women writers need a literal and figurative space of their own to thrive.
Woolf was among the first of the modernist authors to use the stream-of-consciousness technique. Her most well-known works include To the Lighthouse, Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway. The first two of these books, along with a number of other works by Woolf, are available here at Faded Page.
If you would like to help us bring more books by notable authors like Virginia Woolf to Faded Page, then come join us and proofread a few pages of our works in progress. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 15, 2021:
Young readers in the first half of the 20th century devoured books by Franklin W. Dixon, Carolyn Keene, Laura Lee Hope, and Victor Appleton, among others. What these readers didn’t know was that these authors were pseudonyms created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a well-oiled publishing machine founded by Edward Stratemeyer. Stratemeyer himself wrote many of the first books in the series to establish their tone and formula.
Faded Page has recently released new ebook versions of some of the Nancy Drew novels by Carolyn Keene that fall under public domain (for example, Nancy’s Mysterious Letter and the revised edition of The Secret of the Old Clock). Franklin W. Dixon, meanwhile, didn’t just write Hardy Boys stories: he wrote about aviation in the Ted Scott Flying Stories (such as Lost at the South Pole). And you may know Laura Lee Hope as the author of the Bobbsey Twins, but she also wrote stories about the Outdoor Girls, such as The Outdoor Girls at Foaming Falls. Finally, Victor Appleton is best known for his books about Tom Swift: we have a few of those, including Tom Swift and His Chest of Secrets.
If you’re looking for more light mysteries and adventure stories like this on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages to expand our offerings even more. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 1, 2021:
In Canada and the United States, February marks Black History Month where those African Americans who have made significant contributions to the world in the fields of the arts and sciences are recognized.
Langston Hughes is certainly one of the leading African American figures deserving recognition. Born on February 1, 1902, he is well known today as a poet, novelist, dramatist, columnist, essayist, and an early innovator in the new literary form called jazz poetry. Known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of Black life in America from the 1920’s through the Sixties, he was also the first Black writer in America to earn his living from writing.
Living in Harlem in the 1920’s, he was one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance and mingled with a crowd of writers, actors and playwrights including Zora Hurston and critic Carl Van Vechten, who helped get Hughes’ first book of poetry, The Weary Blues published in 1926. The book had popular appeal and established both his poetic style and his commitment to Black themes. He went on to write 17 more books of poetry, over 10 plays (including Mule Bone with Zora Hurston), 8 children’s books, 12 novels and short story collections, and 8 non-fiction books including 2 autobiographies. Here at Faded Page, we have his first autobiography, The Big Sea.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 15, 2021:
This is another of our continuing special series of texts covering the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. Today we’re featuring Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut.
Nunavut was the northeastern part of the Northwest Territories, and split from it on April 1, 1999. It is unique in a number of ways. One of them is that Nunavut is composed of about 25 communities (no city) that can only be reached by air or water, and none is connected to any other. The total population is under 40,000 people.
We don’t have any eBooks specifically about Nunavut, since it didn’t exist until recently. Instead, there are a number of eBooks under the term Northwest Territories that cover the former northern part of Canada.
As a lot of Arctic exploration deals with Nunavut, our eBooks include ones like The Siege and Conquest of the North Pole by George Bryce. Those familiar with Sir John Franklin’s search for the Northwest Passage (which goes through Nunavut) may want to check out Arctic Searching Expedition by Sir John Richardson. For a personal story, try perusing Arctic Mood, which recounts the experiences of Eva Alvey Richards during her time serving as a teacher and nurse in remote Arctic areas during the 1920s. We even have a book by Stephen Leacock as part of the Chronicles of Canada series—Adventurers of the Far North: A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas. For these and more follow this link.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 1, 2021:
We value our many volunteers at Distributed Proofreaders Canada, the organization that produces the eBooks that we proudly offer at Faded Page. So we thought we’d get input from them for this first entry of 2021. This is what some of our members said when asked about their favourite Faded Page book of those they worked on or read in 2020.
Project manager, proofreader and smoothreader teapotter chose The Royal Road to Romance by Richard Halliburton, and said, “A well written and fascinating read! The author takes us on an amazing travel adventure, little money in his pocket and little else but the clothes on his back. The visit to Japan was my favourite, and his determination to climb Fujiyama in winter, with no climbing experience and a little deception to get the help he needed, was for me the best part of the journey.”
Proofreader Sukihon chose the first book of the Nancy Drew series, The Secret of the Old Clock by Mildred Benson writing as Carolyn Keene and the revised edition by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, saying, “It was so much fun to read and compare the two books.”
Proofreader and smoothreader Jean said, “I particularly enjoyed proofing and smoothreading The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. A very intriguing tale!” This book is considered a classic of science fiction.
Featured Text contributor rabbitprincess said, “The Bellamy Trial by Frances Noyes Hart was a bright spot in an otherwise dull 2020. This book, first published in 1927, is one of the first courtroom dramas in mystery fiction. Each chapter covers one day in the trial, so the chapters are on the long side, but it is a compelling read.”
Postprocessor and Featured Text contributor biker said, “My favorite book so far for me as a postprocessor has been the Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal: Nuremberg (Blue Series #9) where Reich Marshal Hermann Göring testifies for 8 days. It is the only book I’ve worked on where I stopped processing and got lost for pages and pages at a time reading Göring’s testimony of what happened.”
Project manager, formatter and smoothreader Iona chose Facts for Everybody (1863), saying, “This is a very interesting book--an ‘encyclopedia’ for everyone. It is a quirky collection of facts and how-to instructions aimed at mid-Victorian people. Some of the items you will laugh at, others you will roll your eyes after reading, and other items are of general interest to just about anyone.”
Ross (rcool), the volunteer who posts the eBooks to Faded Page, said, “My favourite eBooks are the Little House series. There are eight books in all, of which the first was posted back in 2014, but the remaining seven were posted in 2020.They talk about a family’s living conditions, the good and the bad, in the last half of the 1800s. I think they were well written and keep the reader interested!”
Featured Text editor Paulina said, “I liked the atmospheric and disturbing stories of Hugh Walpole’s All Souls’ Night. I hadn’t realized that he was such a prolific author and had contributed works in so many genres.”
If these comments from our volunteers have inspired you to aid us in our efforts to add even more public domain books to this site, then please go to Distributed Proofreaders Canada for information on how to join our team!
December 15, 2020:
To celebrate Christmas this year, Faded Page presents a list of Christmas titles ranging from children’s books to adult drama, and concludes with the Dickens classic.
The Christmas Book by Enid Blyton. An illustrated Christmas book for children. It’s an account of one family’s Christmas experience beginning when the older children arrive home for the school holidays and is told a story which ends on the Big Day itself.
So This Is Christmas! and Other Christmas Stories by Temple Bailey. Seven short stories for young and old with Christmas as the focal point.
A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas. As one of Thomas’s most popular works, the story is an anecdotal retelling of a Christmas from the view of a young child and a romanticized version of Christmases past, portraying a nostalgic and simpler time.
Crime at Christmas by C.H.B. Kitchin. For the avid mystery reader, we have a classic “whodunnit” story which begins with a murder at the Christmas Party.
The House by the Stable—A Christmas Play by Charles Williams exploring themes of Christian symbolism. In the play, Man drinks and dices with Pride and Hell. Does he lose his soul or does the archangel Gabriel save him?
And finally, A Christmas Carol, the Original Manuscript by Charles Dickens. As one of our most popular Christmas downloads, we have the transcript of the first edition with John Leech’s illustrations.
Other eBooks specifically related to Christmas can be found by browsing under the subject tag “Christmas”.
December 1, 2020:
British Columbia is a province of beautiful vistas from majestic snow-topped mountains to deep ocean fjords and from the grasslands of the Cariboo to thousand-kilometer long rivers still used for transport. As with the other provinces, B.C. played an important part in Canada’s history, particularly in the necessity to build the railway to open up the west for future pioneers. Those railroads were needed to move resources and products from the western-most province to the other provinces and, in return, to bring food and other goods needed by those living and working in B.C.
While First Nations people have lived in B.C. for well over 12,000 years, non-Indigenous people didn’t arrive until a few centuries ago. There were Spanish, English, American and Russian explorers arriving by sea along the coast or by land from the western American territories as early as the mid-1700’s. These explorers were discovering B.C., its geography, resources and inhabitants at the same time that the French and English were exploring and opening up the country from the east and who eventually arrived overland, often travelling on long, province-spanning rivers, from eastern Canada by the late 1700’s. The Gold Rushes of British Columbia started about 1850; and soon thousands of adventurers and other colonists were arriving in B.C. swelling the population.
With the promise by the Canadian government to extend the Canadian Pacific Railway to B.C., it became the sixth province to join the Canadian Confederation in July 1871.
Faded Page has almost 30 books—many are history—relating to British Columbia. Several of those history books are part of the special collection The Chronicles of Canada which are written for school-age children. There are over 20 titles—fiction as well as non-fiction—listed under the tag British Columbia; 2 titles on the history of the west coast are under the tag Pacific and 6 titles tagged railway are on the history of building various railways from coast to coast across Canada. Do check out some of the titles and learn more about Canada’s most western province.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 15, 2020:
This is another of our continuing special series of texts covering the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. Today we’re staying in the prairies but going to the easternmost prairie province of Manitoba. It’s known for its agricultural production of grains, potatoes and sunflower seeds and for Canada’s only Arctic deep-water seaport in Churchill, where world-famous polar bear and beluga whale watching takes place.
We have a few books about the early history of Manitoba including The Red River Colony: A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Canada, First Furrows: A History of the Early Settlement of the Red River Country by Alfred Campbell Garrioch, and a historical fiction account of Lord Selkirk’s Red River Colony in Mine Inheritance by Frederick Niven.
Other eBooks specifically related to Manitoba include Birds of Manitoba by Ernest Thompson Seton, Grain, a novel about life on a grain farm by Robert Stead, and The Real Home-Keeper, a cookbook and home-management guide for Winnipeg brides introducing them to the Winnipeg businesses of 1914.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 1, 2020:
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) is best known for his humorous writing. However, he also wrote many scholarly works in his field of study, political science. In 1915, Leacock wrote the article, “War Scenes Across the Canadian Border” for the American readers of the magazine Vanity Fair. As we commemorate on November 11 Remembrance Day in Canada and Armistice Day in other countries, it seems fitting to reflect on Leacock’s view of World War I from a Canadian perspective, as it was happening.
This essay is one of many works in our Special Collection: The Works of Stephen Leacock. While it is extensive, it is not yet complete. Consider joining us to help complete this collection and bring other public-domain books to our readers. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 15, 2020:
All Souls’ Day, on November 2, is part of Hallowmas season, a Western Christian celebration that begins with Hallowe’en on October 31. The day is devoted to prayer and remembrance for the souls of the dead. Hugh Walpole’s collection of stories, All Souls’ Night, published in 1933, fits this theme well, as it is filled with tales of ghosts, haunted houses, and mysterious happenings. Not all the stories are scary or deal with the supernatural, but most are disconcerting in some way.
Sir Hugh Seymore Walpole (1884-1941) was a prolific writer, producing a large body of work that includes novels, short stories, plays and memoirs, and covering a variety of genres. At Faded Page, we have a substantial number of his works, listed in our Special Collection: Sir Hugh Walpole. Consider joining us to help fill out this collection and bring other public-domain books to our readers. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
The image above is All Souls’ Day by Jakub Schikaneder, 1888.
October 1, 2020:
In The Bellamy Trial, by Frances Noyes Hart, Madeleine Bellamy is found murdered in a gardener’s cottage on an estate belonging to the family of Susan Ives. Madeleine’s husband, Stephen, and Susan are on trial for her murder. Madeleine appears to have been having an affair with Susan’s husband, Patrick, so on the surface it appears that the two jilted spouses put a stop to the affair in the most direct way possible. But is the truth that simple?
This is one of the earliest courtroom mysteries. Each chapter covers one day of the eight-day trial; the chapters are on the long side, but the testimony and dialogue make this an absorbing read. Interjections by two reporters covering the trial serve as commentary and devices to moderate the tension. If you are a devotee of crime fiction published between the wars, particularly crime fiction written by women, this makes an excellent weekend’s worth of reading.
This novel is one of over 500 mysteries available for your enjoyment on Faded Page. If you like what you see here on Faded Page and want to help us expand our collection even further, do come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 15, 2020:
This is another of our continuing special series of texts covering the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. Today we’re, as one of Gordon Lightfoot’s songs goes, “Alberta Bound” (from his album Don Quixote).
Alberta is the westernmost of the three Prairie provinces (the others being Saskatchewan and Manitoba). It’s known for the Athabasca tar/oil sands (for good or bad, depending on your view), beef cattle farms, cowboys, and the Rocky Mountains which form its western boundary.
We have a few eBooks specifically about Alberta, and those we do have tend to be about travel, such as Jasper National Park in the Rockies west of Edmonton (and its famed West Edmonton Mall) and Banff National Park in the Rockies west of Calgary (which is, no surprise, home of the famous Calgary Stampede).
Other eBooks mention Alberta as part of the Canadian Prairies (On the Old Athabasca Trail by Lawrence Burpee), as part of getting to the old Gold Rush in the Yukon (The Great Gold Rush. A Tale of the Klondike by W. H. P. Jarvis), or before that, as part of the fur trading along with the North West Company and The Hudson’s Bay Company in Western Canada (The Fur Bringers: A Story of the Canadian Northwest) by Hulbert Footner.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 1, 2020:
Thomas Bertram Costain (May 8, 1885 – October 8, 1965) was a Canadian journalist and editor born in Brantford, Ontario. He began his writing career as a newspaper reporter for local newspapers around Brantford. He took a job at Maclean’s Publishing managing three trade journals before becoming the managing editor of Maclean’s magazine in 1917. The Saturday Evening Post in New York picked him up and by 1920, he had become the editor-in-chief. In 1934, Twentieth-Century Fox offered him the job as Eastern story editor. By 1939, he had become an advisory editor for Doubleday Books. Although he had been writing stories and magazine articles beginning in high school, his career as a recognized novelist writer began in 1942 when, at the age of 57, he became a best-selling author with the publication of For My Great Folly. In 1946, he retired to write full-time averaging at a rate of about 3,000 words a day.
His fast-paced historical fiction was extremely popular and sold in the millions. The Black Rose, his most popular novel, sold more than 2 million copies. Costain’s work is a mixture of commercial history (such as The White and The Gold, a history of New France to around 1720) and fiction that relies heavily on historical events. During his career, he turned out more than 500 magazine articles, biographies, and best-selling historical fiction novels. Two novels, The Silver Chalice and The Black Rose were made into movies.
Here at Faded Page we have several Costain titles including The Silver Chalice, The Last Love, The Darkness and the Dawn, and The Black Rose, with more to come in future months.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 15, 2020:
We’re doing a special series of texts covering the ten provinces and three territories of Canada. This is the first of the series covering Canada’s easternmost province: Newfoundland and Labrador. For those not sure of its pronunciation it’s like noof’n-land, not new-found-land!
Newfoundland is the newest province to join Canada in 1949, and renamed to include Labrador in 2001. However, it’s probably the first province to have been visited by outsiders over 1,000 years ago. Newfoundland is the island part, and Labrador is part of the mainland. They have a population just over a half million, with the majority on the east side of Newfoundland. It’s famous for a number of things, such as Grand Banks fishing, Gros Morne National Park which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Guglielmo Marconi receiving the first transatlantic wireless signal at Signal Hill, St. John’s, among other things.
We have a few books about Newfoundland and Labrador, mainly about travel, such as A Visit to Newfoundland by Mary L. B. Branch and After Icebergs with a Painter by Louis L. Noble, and for those with knowledge of French, there’s Voyage à Terre-Neuve by Arthur de Gobineau. If you’ve heard of Sir Wilfred Grenfell or want to find more about this medical missionary, see Dr. Grenfell’s Parish.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 1, 2020:
My name is Andrew, and my involvement with Distributed Proofreaders Canada (under the name bunny-crunch), has mostly been related to books in Esperanto.
Although Esperanto has a rich literary history, including translations and original material right from the beginning in 1887, the first “Golden Age” of Esperanto literature was from the 1920s-1930s. Most of the Esperanto texts at Fadedpage are from this era. Within those texts, there is plenty of variety.
There is the collection of charming short stories, Noveloj by Henryk Sienkiewicz (an internationally popular Polish author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize), as translated by Lidja Zamenhof.
Kredu Min, Sinjorino! by Cezaro Rossetti is one of the highlights of the Esperanto novel in the twentieth century. It presents autobiographical sketches of life as a travelling salesman, often attempting to sell items of dubious value to people who do not need them. It has been translated into at least four other languages.
El la “Verda Biblio” is an amazing work of satire that deserves a blog post all to itself. It presents a humorously distorted history of the Esperanto movement, written in the style of Bible verses.
We also have the collection of original poetry Mia spektro, by the Latvian Nikolajs Ķurzēns. Working in such miniature forms is where his talents shone out brightly.
Tur-Strato 4 by Hans Weinhengst is a novel in a gritty, realistic vein. It tells of the unhappy life of the underpriviledged in the slums of Vienna.
In a very contrasting mood, we find Tri angloj alilande, by the British John Merchant. It tells the story of three British gentlemen and their bumbling misadventures on the continent. The humoristic style is reminiscent of Three men in a boat.
Por recenzo! is a story (perhaps we could call it a novella) with an experimental mosaic-form, where the point of view keeps shifting from the life of one character to another. Part fiction, part study of contemporary times.
There are many more Esperanto books worth preserving that are public domain in Canada. Some are currently in preparation—come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 15, 2020:
“Babette’s Feast” by Karen Blixen is the story of Martine and Philippa, two pious, elderly sisters living in Norway, and Babette, their exiled French maid. Babette has won a windfall in the lottery and instead of leaving the sisters, she chooses to treat them and their guests to a sumptuous gourmet feast. Martine and Philippa have serious misgivings as they are worried their souls will be lost by enjoying such excessive earthly pleasures. Nevertheless, they agree as Babette insists.
As the story evolves with the preparation of the French banquet consisting of Potage à la Tortue (Turtle Soup), Blinis Demidoff (Pancakes with Caviar), Cailles en Sarcophage (Quail in Puff Pastry with Truffle Sauce), and Baba au Rhum (Rum Infused Tea Cake, as shown in the photo) along with the best vintage wines, the twelve dinner guests also evolve and change with the consumption of the feast. The story concludes with a surprise ending. Babette had a secret, and when good fortune smiled upon her, she used it.
The story was made into the Danish film Babettes gæstebud (Babette’s Feast) and won the 1987 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. This story and other short stories can be found here at Faded Page in Anecdotes of Destiny. Other Blixen short story collections include Last Tales and Seven Gothic Tales.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Photo: Mogens Engelund
July 1, 2020:
After several months of COVID-19 lockdown, Canada’s national parks started to reopen to the public in June 2020. For those who would prefer to visit the parks from the comfort of their own home, Faded Page is pleased to offer some non-fiction books on the subject. You may wish to learn the story of the mountains of Banff National Park, explore the islands and shorelines of The National Parks in Ontario, or discover where the mountains meet the sea at Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
Right now Faded Page has 10 books about Canadian national parks, and not many from the middle of the country. If you want to help us bring more public-domain Canadiana to the attention of the public, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 15, 2020:
Protests and demonstrations, not just in the United States but in other parts of the world, following the killing of George Floyd have put racism and injustice in the spotlight. As a result, many citizens have been motivated to learn more about these issues and their historical context. Online news sites, magazines and blogs have posted recommended reading lists and books on these topics have dominated recent bestseller lists.
One notable book that is available here at Faded Page is Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Set in Florida in the early 20th century, this book has Janie Crawford recounting the events of her life, in her own distinctive voice rich in dialect. Though the novel had a poor reception when it was published in 1937, it is now considered a classic of both feminist literature and African American literature. The BBC News included Hurston’s book in its 2019 list of the 100 most influential novels.
Zora Neale Hurston (1981-1960) was a novelist, anthropologist and filmmaker, who portrayed racial struggles in the American South in much of her work. Appreciation for her work did not grow significantly until after her death. One of her nonfiction books, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”, remained unpublished and largely forgotten until 2018.
Here at Faded Page, we have a number of Hurston’s works, including Dust Tracks on a Road, her 1942 autobiography. Please consider joining us and proofreading a few pages to help bring more books like these to a wider audience. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 1, 2020:
Who’s up for a game of cards? Let’s assemble the deck with some books from the Faded Page catalogue that have kings, queens, and jacks in the title.
The Uncrowned King, by Baroness Orczy, is a historical novel first published in 1935. As with many of Orczy’s historical novels, this is set during the French Revolution and features a cameo appearance by the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Moving across the Channel to England, Queen Victoria, by Lytton Strachey, is a biography of the aforementioned queen. The Faded Page edition reproduces the paintings and illustrations by Edwin Landseer, Edward Corbould, and Heinrich von Angeli.
Historical Canada rounds out our hand with Jack Chanty: A Story of Athabasca, by Hulbert Footner. Jack is a travelling musician who plies his trade by rafting down the river with his banjo.
If you’d like to see more works of historical fiction or non-fiction on the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 15, 2020:
Hi, my name is Ross but I go by the moniker rcool. I have been a volunteer with Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC), the organization that provides public-domain eBooks to Faded Page since its beginnings in December 2007. I have been involved in many aspects of the DPC community and currently do proofing and posting of eBooks to Faded Page. When you participate in DPC, you get exposed to a wide range of books and publications.
The author I want to speak about today is Richard Austin Freeman, from England, who wrote a number of books but is well known mostly for a series of books featuring the fictitious Dr. Thorndyke. Currently we have 37 of his Thorndyke Mystery books at Faded Page for your perusal.
To help explain the mysteries, Wikipedia’s “Dr. Thorndyke” page says: “Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke is a fictional detective in a long series of 21 novels and 40 short stories by British author R. Austin Freeman (1862 1943). Thorndyke was described by his author as a ‘medical jurispractitioner’: originally a medical doctor, he turned to the bar and became one of the first-Min modern parlance—forensic scientists. His solutions were based on his method of collecting all possible data (including dust and pond weed) and making inferences from them before looking at any of the protagonists and motives in the crimes. (Freeman, it is said, conducted all experiments mentioned in the stories himself.) It is this method which gave rise to one of Freeman’s most ingenious inventions, the inverted detective story, where the criminal act is described first and the interest lies in Thorndyke’s subsequent unravelling of it.”
Of course your choices may not match mine, and that’s fine as there are lots of eBooks to choose from! If you want to check out any of our Richard Austin Freeman books then go to this page.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 1, 2020:
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend…” ― Groucho Marx
So today we give you books about dogs. We currently offer several authors who specialize in books about dogs and a dog’s life. Our latest addition, A Dog Named Chips by Albert Terhune is a story about the dog we all know who, as a puppy, gets into everything and is full of surprises.
For the very young, Enid Blyton offers books like The Adventures of Scamp, another mischievous puppy story, The Boy Who Wanted a Dog, a story that helps children understand the responsibilities of owning and caring for a dog, and Shadow the Sheepdog, in which the working dog’s life is told.
Jim Kjelgaard also has books about working dogs such as Rescue Dog of the High Pass and A Nose for Trouble, about a hound dog with a nose for tracking human poachers. His Big Red series begins with Big Red, about an Irish Setter and a boy, and the series evolves into stories about Big Red’s progeny. We currently have 23 titles at this site about dogs, with more to come. Readers who enjoy these books might also enjoy Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight, Sirius, an adult fantasy novel by philosopher Olaf Stapledon about a dog with humanlike intelligence, or A Lucky Dog by Max Brand, a book with a western flair.If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 15, 2020:
Les événements du roman Vol de nuit d’Antoine de Saint-Exupéry sont tirés des expériences de l’auteur lorsqu’il faisait le courrier de vol en Amérique du Sud. A cette époque, l’aviation était encore un métier pionnier et les vols de nuit étaient encore nouveaux : les pilotes devaient se débrouiller avec des communications radio non fiables et des instruments moins puissants, et leurs patrons devaient prendre des décisions d’opérations avec des informations qui pourraient ne pas être de dernière heure. Les vols de nuit, et le vol tout simple dans ces conditions, se ressemblaient plus à une devoir qu’à un boulot.
Ce roman poétique (mais pas sans suspens) est le seul roman de Saint-Exupéry que nous avons en ce moment sur Faded Page. Si vous aimeriez trouver d’autres ouvrages par cet auteur sur le site, joignez-vous à nous et corriger quelques pages. Pour plus d’informations, veuillez vous rendre à notre site Web associé, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
The events of Vol de nuit, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, are based on the author’s own experiences working on the airmail service in South America. This was when aviation was still a pioneering venture and night flight was still a novelty: pilots had to contend with unreliable radios and less powerful instruments, and their bosses had to make operational decisions with potentially outdated information. Night flight—flight, period—under these circumstances wasn’t just a job: it was almost a duty.
This novel is poetic, but not without suspense, and it is the only Saint-Exupéry novel we currently have in the Faded Page collection. If you’d like to see more of his work on this site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 1, 2020:
My name is Cindy and I go by the moniker biker at Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC). Even though I live in Thailand, I have been a volunteer with DPC since October 2012 when I began proofreading and formatting. Now I spend my time mostly formatting and post-processing e-books for Faded Page.
One of our most challenging authors is William Faulkner. Faulkner can be difficult to read due to the American Deep South dialect, his unique use of punctuation, and his emphasis on characters and character development over plot or theme. He stated his goal as a writer was “to create flesh-and-blood people that will stand up and cast a shadow.” If you had ever watched the movies The Reivers or The Sound and the Fury, you would remember Steve McQueen playing Boon, and Joanne Woodward and Yul Brynner playing Quentin and Jason. You would remember the character, but not necessarily the name of the story.
Faulkner is an author that needs to be read more than once in order to observe the nuances and character dimensions more fully and to observe Faulkner’s other goal of portraying the “familiar old, old story of the human heart in conflict with itself”—Quentin and Jason, and Caddy.
To those who are new to Faulkner and want to try a sample, I would suggest starting with one of his short stories like “Barn Burning” in The Faulkner Reader and migrating to bigger pieces like “Old Man”. Although this book is a compendium of short stories, novellas and The Sound and the Fury in its entirety, we also have a complete list of Faulkner titles you can explore on this page.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 15, 2020:
Hi, my name is Ross but I go by the moniker rcool. I have been a volunteer with Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC), the organization that provides public-domain e-books to Faded Page, since its beginnings in December 2007. I have been involved in many aspects of the DPC community and currently do proofing and posting of eBooks to Faded Page. When you participate in DPC, you get exposed to a wide range of books and publications.
The author I want to speak about today is Mazo de la Roche, from north of Toronto, who wrote a number of books but is well known mostly for a series of 16 books which cover 100 years of the wealthy Whiteoak family history at their estate called Jalna, and it is partly based on de la Roche’s own experiences. Currently we have 19 of her books at Faded Page for your perusal, with many more to follow.
Jalna, written in 1927, was the first written in the series but ended up being seventh chronologically. The critical acclaim inspired the author to produce sequels and prequels, and my advice is to read them in chronological order, not publication date. A 1935 film version of the book, directed by John Cromwell, was, according to Variety, “a nice production of a not very good adaptation.” The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) also made a movie in 1951 and a 5-episode TV series in 1972.
Of course your choices may not match mine, and that’s fine as there are lots of eBooks to choose from! If you want to check out any of our Mazo de la Roche books then go to this page.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 1, 2020:
One of the ways we categorize books here at Faded Page is through subject tags. Books categorized under “law” include books about individual legal cases, fictional stories with a legal theme, or books about the history of law and legal procedures. Here are a few of our books in the law category that you might find interesting, informative, and thought-provoking.
For purely entertaining fiction, you might like Tut, Tut! Mr. Tutt by Arthur Train. This work includes eight tales about Mr. Ephraim Tutt, a wily old lawyer who supports the common man and always has a trick up his sleeve to right the law’s injustices.
Or you might be interested in one of the classics of literature, Bleak House by Charles Dickens. This satirizes the British judicial system of Dickens’s time, in that the story involves conflicting wills turning into a long-run legal case.
From a historical perspective, we have Legal Status of Canadian Women by Henrietta Muir Edwards. This is a pamphlet containing extracts from Dominion and Provincial Laws relating to marriage, property, dower, divorce, descent of land, franchise, crime and other subjects that affected Canadian women in 1908.
Or, you might be interested in reading Roman Law and the British Empire, a lecture given by Harold Adams Innis on March 30, 1950 at The University of New Brunswick commemorating the 150th anniversary of the institution.
We have many more titles about law at Faded Page. Just look above this article under “Browse” and “Tags”. Then click on “…more…” for a complete list of all our subject categories, including law. If you would like to help us provide more public domain titles like these, then come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 15, 2020:
Scottish Gaelic was added to the popular language-learning app Duolingo in late 2019. If you signed up to learn this language and want to try reading in Gaelic, we can help with that! Check out Gearr-sgeoil air Sir Seoras Uilleam Ros, Alexander Fraser’s biography of Sir George William Ross, the fifth Premier of Ontario. The book also includes an account of Highland settlers in Upper Canada.
The author, Alexander Fraser (1860-1936), was the first Archivist of Ontario and in 1887 organized the Gaelic Society of Canada. The image above shows the Ontario Legislative Building in the 1890's, where the Bureau of Archives, as it was called then, was first located.
We make books in many languages available on Faded Page. If you’d like to help us expand our Gaelic collection, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 1, 2020:
Hi, my name is Ross but I go by the moniker rcool. I have been a volunteer with Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC), the organization that provides public-domain e-books to Faded Page, since its beginnings in December 2007. I have been involved in many aspects of the DPC community and currently do proofing and posting of eBooks to Faded Page. When you participate in DPC, you get exposed to a wide range of books and publications.
The author I want to speak about today is Enid Blyton, from England, who was well known mostly for many children’s books and books on nature. However, I don’t think I had ever heard of her before coming across her books here at DPC. Currently we have 59 of her books at Faded Page for your perusal, with many more to follow.
Probably her best known nature books are a set of four, one for each season, entitled Round the Year with Enid Blyton. Since these books are written about England, things will be different in other countries, but you also get to learn more about nature in England!
For children’s books, she has numerous different series, as well as many individual books. One of my two favourite series would be Five Find-Outers, composed of five children and dog, that solve mysteries, typically before the local constable can. The other would be Malory Towers, which is a six-book series (of which we currently have five at Faded Page, with the sixth coming). It’s about a girls’ school and follows one class through the various years.
Of course your choices may not match mine, and that’s fine as there are lots of books to choose from! If you want to check out any of our Enid Blyton books then go to this page.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 15, 2020:
Penrod Jashber is the story of an 11-year-old middle-class boy in a small Midwest city and his dream to become a detective. Penrod Schofield decides to become detective George Jashber and with his friends sets up a detective agency. He and his gang spend a great deal of effort sleuthing and getting into all kinds of boy mischief as they try to prove to themselves that “their man” really is a horse thief. When reality confronts them and exposes Penrod’s fantasy world for what it is, Penrod discards his alias “Jashber”, closes the agency, and he and the gang return to their boyhood activities.
Initially serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine before being published in 1929, Penrod Jashber was preceded by Penrod and Penrod and Sam, (both available at Gutenberg.org.) which were collections of short stories about Penrod and his friends. Penrod Jashber is a complete novel taking place in what could be Tarkington’s own home town, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869—May 19, 1946) grew up in Indianapolis and wrote about the places and people he was familiar with. His idyllic settings made his novels and plays popular with the public and represented an idyllic life that many people wanted for themselves and for their families. During the 1910’s and 1920’s, Tarkington was a bestseller author and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction (Alice Adams and The Magnificent Ambersons).
We currently have 14 Booth Tarkington titles at this site with more to come. Readers who enjoy Booth Tarkington’s style of fiction writing might also enjoy Mary’s Neck, The Fighting Littles, or The Heritage of Hatcher Ide. If you are interested in helping us make more notable books of this kind available to readers, then come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 1, 2020:
To celebrate the beginning of a new decade, let’s read through the twenties, the 1920s, that is. Here is a sampling of the books that grabbed people’s attention 90-100 years ago and are still loved today.
- The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton — A story of 19th century New York high society that earned its author a Pulitzer Prize and which has been adapted for both stage and film.
- The Story of the Mikado (1921) by W. S. Gilbert — A children’s book based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s popular operetta The Mikado, beautifully illustrated by Alice Bolingbroke Woodward.
- Nonsense Novels (1922) by Stephen Leacock — A collection of absurd and hilarious stories by Canada’s most famous humorist.
- Emily of New Moon (1923) by L. M. Montgomery — The first of the three Emily novels by the creator of the beloved Anne of Green Gables.
- The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories (1924) by Dashiell Hammett — Stories from the author who is considered the dean of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction.
- The Witches Brew (1925) by E. J. Pratt — An early collection from a three-time winner of the Canadian Governor General’s Award for poetry.
- The Great Gatsby (1926) by F. Scott Fitzgerald — A story set in the Roaring Twenties that is considered one of the greatest American novels of all time.
- To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf — A classic of the Modernist period, named by the Modern Library as No. 15 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
- Decline and Fall (1928) by Evelyn Waugh — A humorous social satire that targets British society in the 1920’s.
- The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner — A highly influential work using the stream-of-conciousness technique; this novel contributed to Faulkner’s winning the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.
All of these books are available here at Faded Page. If you would like to help us provide more public-domain titles like these, then come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 15, 2019:
The Clock Strikes Twelve by Patricia Wentworth is the perfect book to read as we head toward the new year. Wealthy businessman James Paradine gathers his family members for the traditional New Year’s Eve dinner and declares that one of them has betrayed the family without revealing the name of the accused. Soon after the clock strikes twelve, Paradine dies and one of the household is a murderer. Retired governess and private detective Miss Maud Silver is called in to help the police solve this classic English country house mystery.
Patricia Wentworth (1877-1961) is the pseudonym of Dora Amy Elles. She was a prolific novelist and best known for her Miss Silver series of detective novels. The 32 stories in this series are great examples of the British Golden Age mysteries and often feature romantic elements as well as clever plots. Miss Silver is often compared to Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple; both frequently figure out the solutions to the mysteries with knitting needles in hand.
We have almost all the Miss Silver novels, as well as a number of other works, in our Patricia Wentworth Special Collection. If you would like to help us provide more public-domain titles like these, then come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 1, 2019:
Painting by Eugène Galien-Laloue
Parmi les ouvrages français offerts sur notre site Web sont les 6 premiers tomes du “roman-fleuve” Les Thibault, de Roger Martin du Gard. Les Thibault étaient si populaire que M. du Gard a remporté le prix Nobel pour la littérature avant d’avoir terminé le cycle. Le cycle traite de deux familles, les Thibault et les Fontanin, au début du 20e siècle et pendant la Première Guerre mondiale. Sa traduction anglaise est hors print pendant des décennies; sa réception était meilleure en Europe qu’en Amérique du Nord. En France, on a fait deux adaptations télévisées du cycle (en 1972 et en 2003).
Les tomes qui se trouvent sur Faded Page sont les suivants : Le cahier gris, Le pénitencier, La belle saison, La consultation, La sorellina, and La mort du père. Si vous désirez nous aider à faire disponible les deux derniers tomes du cycle, joignez-vous à nous et corriger quelques pages. Pour plus d’informations, veuillez vous rendre à notre site Web associé, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Our French offerings on Faded Page include the first six volumes of the Les Thibault sequence of novels by Roger Martin du Gard. Du Gard won the Nobel Prize for Literature even before he’d finished writing this sequence, it was considered that good! The novels focus on two families, the Thibaults and the Fontanins, at the beginning of the 20th century and during the First World War. The English translation has been out of print for decades; it was better received in Europe than in North America. In France, the novels have been adapted twice for television (in 1972 and in 2003).
The Thibault novels available on Faded Page are as follows (in French only): Le cahier gris, Le pénitencier, La belle saison, La consultation, La sorellina, and La mort du père. If you want to help us make the last two volumes available on our site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 15, 2019:
Hi, my name is John but I go by the moniker Atrian42. I have been a volunteer with Distributed Proofreaders Canada, the organization that provides public-domain e-books to Faded Page, since August 2016. Since then I have been involved in many aspects of the DPC community and recently started contributing new content. When you participate in DPC you get exposed to a wide range of books and publications. My own tastes are varied but I especially like books that tell a good story and you can find them anywhere. Here are some of my recommendations of books in the Faded Page catalogue.
The Sojourner, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
A tale of an American pioneer who works a farm in the American Midwest. The book chronicles his life and his love of the land and the people he meets along the way. He copes with difficult family members and children but they can’t break his deep connection to the land and his odd assortment of friends ... a great story.
Peace River Country, by Ralph Allen.
A book about the Canadian prairies and a family who travels to escape from an alcoholic father. They meet many people along the way and their semi-mythical goal: the Peace River Country of northern Alberta always seems to be right around every corner. An endearing tale for Canada’s western lands.
Hornblower and the Hotspur, by C.S. Forester.
I read some of the Horatio Hornblower series as a teenager but could only find two or three of the series at my local library. Faded Page brings you the complete series of 11 books. I worked on several of the novels and I especially liked this entry. A rip-roaring adventure novel telling the story of Forester’s hero as he battles the French during the Napoleonic Wars.
Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious
Peyton Place is an engrossing story of three women living in a small New England town as they confront issues of sexual abuse, murder and racism. Metalious weaves a splendid narrative that encapsulates the flavour of small town life in 1950s America.
The Gathering Storm, by Winston Churchill
Volume I of a six volume series presents the Second World War from the perspective of one of the great men of our time. A massive chronicle, Churchill offers a first person view of the events of that critical era that nearly ripped the entire world asunder. Included in his writing is much of the correspondence he wrote which gives a unique behind the scenes look at what was happening as the allies confronted the menace to the free world. Can’t wait for the rest of the series which Faded Page will eventually host.
November 1, 2019:
The General, by C. S. Forester, chronicles the career of Herbert Curzon as he rises through the ranks during the Boer War and the first few years of the First World War. Curzon is a relatively ordinary man but becomes fully part of the machine of war, believing it is his duty to adhere to the same old tactics, even when they patently do not work. It has a sharp satirical edge (“Men who stopped to think about their chances of being killed were a nuisance to their superior officers”) and highlights especially well the futility of so many people dying at Ypres, Passchendaele, and the Somme.
You may recognize C. S. Forester as the author of the Hornblower series. Some of his other books include The Captain from Connecticut, which is set at the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars, and Hunting the Bismarck, which tells of how the British navy took down one of the German navy’s most ferocious battleships in the Second World War.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public-domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 15, 2019:
A photographer’s freak accident in the dark room produces a chemical concoction causing him and his dog to randomly switch back and forth between normal and skeleton versions of themselves. Much drinking and cavorting ensues, as he finds people able to see beyond his appearance and appreciate him for who he is, while inadvertently terrifying others.
James Thorne Smith, Jr. (March 27, 1892 – June 21, 1934) was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for his two Topper novels and comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking and supernatural transformations. With racy illustrations, these sold millions of copies in the 1930s and were equally popular in paperbacks of the 1950s. His most popular work, Topper, was not only a favorite book, but it was also adapted into a successful movie with two sequels, a top radio program and a popular TV series.
Thorne’s impact can be felt in the writings of authors as diverse as Robert Bloch, Neil Gaiman, and James Thurber. Other works influenced by him include the cartoons Beetle Bailey, Sad Sack and Casper the Friendly Ghost and the TV shows Bewitched, Mr. Ed, and I Dream of Jeannie.
Readers who enjoy Thorne Smith’s humor might also enjoy his books Turnabout, The Stray Lamb, or Topper here at Faded Page. More titles are currently in the proofing rounds. We invite you to come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 1, 2019:
The World’s Best Humorous Anecdotes was compiled by James Gilchrist Lawson and published in 1923. It has over 1400 anecdotes -- enough humour to read four a day for a year! It is similar to some humour found in Reader’s Digest.
Here’s a Canadian example:
“Where are you from?”
“Saskatchewan!”
“That’s a bad cold you got, neighbor.”
Lawson published another humorous book, The World’s Best Conundrums and Riddles of all Ages. We do not yet have that title or any others of his typically religious books, but there are many other eBooks Fadedpage has in a humorous vein. We have a mixture of Canadian books, many by Stephen Butler Leacock, and ones from elsewhere. Feel free to search around and look forward to a few chuckles or laughs!
James Gilchrist Lawson (1874-1946) was an American evangelist and hymn writer who compiled several best-selling books of Christian biography and poetry, as well as the humorous books mentioned above.
If you are interested in helping us make more notable books of this kind available to readers, then come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 15, 2019:
The Man Who Went Back is a story about a modern man who is injured in an auto accident and mysteriously wakes up in Roman times in England. Only after he is killed in a battle does he wake up again in the present. Readers who enjoy time travel, Arthurian legend, romance with strong heroine characters, and journeys through the British countryside will enjoy this Warwick Deeping novel.
Published in hardback on three continents in 1940, it also appeared in its entirety in “Amazing Adventures” science fiction magazine in the 1940s under the same title. Deeping’s early work is dominated by historical romances and this novel includes romance, historical ties and adds a science fiction time travel element.
Warwick Deeping (28 May 1877 – 20 April 1950) was an English novelist and short story writer. He abandoned medical practice to write full time and became one of the best-selling authors of the 1920s and 1930s, with seven novels making the bestseller list. Deeping was a prolific writer of short stories which appeared in such British magazines as Cassell’s, The Story-Teller, and The Strand. Well over 200 of these original short stories and essays were never seen in book form. His later novels usually dealt with modern life and were critical of many tendencies of twentieth-century civilization, often dealing with controversial issues such as alcoholism and medicine in the slums. His standpoint was generally that of passionate individualism, distrustful both of ruling elites and of the lower classes, who were often presented as a threat to his embattled middle-class protagonists.
We currently have thirty-four Warwick Deeping titles at this site with more to come. Readers who enjoy Warwick Deeping’s style of fiction writing might also enjoy Kitty, The Woman at the Door, or Old Pybus. If you are interested in helping us make more notable books of this kind available to readers, then come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 1, 2019:
If you’re in need of a book where everything works out exactly as you’d hope, and everyone gets their just deserts, look no further than The Blue Castle. Valancy Stirling is one of the most deserving heroines out there, and it’s sheer delight to see everything working out for her.
This is one of the few L.M. Montgomery books not set in Prince Edward Island. If you want to see what other works of hers we have available, check out the special collection on Faded Page. And if you want to see more of her works or those of her contemporaries, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 15, 2019:
The Edge of the Sea is for those laypersons interested in the various creatures that inhabit the shoreline at low and high tide. It focuses on the plants and invertebrates surviving in the Atlantic zones from Newfoundland to the Florida Keys. As a conclusion to Rachel Carson’s “Sea Trilogy” that begins with Under the Sea-wind and follows with her famous The Sea Around Us, her third book delves into the nature of life at the boundaries of sea and land. Poetically written, this book still serves as a good introduction to marine biology even though it was published in 1955. Carson also discusses the human impact on the shoreline, pollution, and quality of the ocean water itself. The book’s Appendix and Index make it a great reference tool for those interested in plant and animal life around tidepools.
Rachel Carson was a writer, scientist, and ecologist who earned her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University. For fifteen years she worked as a scientist and became Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service before devoting herself full-time to writing books and articles on the environment.
We have the complete “Sea Trilogy” including Under the Sea-wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea in addition to Carson’s seminal work, Silent Spring. If you like these books and want to see more on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 1, 2019:
Metal fatigue in an airplane may not sound like a thrilling subject, but in Nevil Shute’s No Highway, it could be a matter of life and death. In this story, the brand-new Reindeer aircraft is the pride of the transatlantic route between the UK and Canada; however, the tailplane, which is of a unique design, may be vulnerable to failure at only 1400 flying hours. The plane has already been involved in one crash where this issue may have been a factor, and engineer Theodore Honey is on his way to Canada to validate the hypothesis. And then he realizes that he is travelling on a Reindeer…and it’s dangerously close to the possible failure point. Can the existence of this fatigue problem be found in time, and will Theodore arrive in Canada without mishap?
Nevil Shute, as an aeronautical engineer, really knows his stuff; his books are often populated with engineers or other intellectual types, and the details ring true. Faded Page has 23 copies of Shute’s books available for your enjoyment.
If you like what we do here on Faded Page and want to help us add even more public-domain books to the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 15, 2019:
I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
— from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
A Handful of Dust takes on the same theme of a decaying civilization as Eliot’s poem. With its isolated characters representing a civilization in decline, Waugh presents a story laced with cynicism and truth satirizing the gentry class of English life between world wars. The main characters, Tony and Brenda Last, have wealth but are lacking in other qualities. The plot is a series of absurd situations in which the Lasts and their friends ignore the most sensible course and sail into the rocky reef completely oblivious to the fact that they will most likely crash.
Made into a movie of the same name in 1988, A Handful of Dust is #34 on the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list.
We currently have seven Evelyn Waugh titles at this site with more to come. Readers who enjoy Evelyn Waugh’s brand of satire and characteristic black humor in lampooning various features of British society might also enjoy Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Put Out More Flags, or Brideshead Revisited.
July 1, 2019:
To celebrate Canada Day on July 1, we take a look at one of Canada’s most renowned artists, Emily Carr (1871-1945). Carr is particularly well known for her paintings inspired by Aboriginal Canadians and their environment. She was also a writer, and Klee Wyck is a memoir consisting of short pieces describing her experiences interacting and occasionally living among the Aboriginals.
“Klee Wyck” was a name given to Carr by the Ucluelet people and it means “Laughing One”. It is an appropriate name, as the stories are full of humour, warmth and interesting observations, and in them, Carr’s love and admiration for the Aboriginal people are apparent. In Klee Wyck, Carr describes in detail the many totem poles she tried to preserve in her artwork. The accompanying image is of Kitwancool, one such painting.
Klee Wyck won the Governor General’s Award in 1941. Be sure to browse the list of Governor General’s Award winners that we have available here at Faded Page. If you are interested in helping us make more notable books of this kind available to readers, then come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 15, 2019:
Mystery in the Channel by Freeman Wills Crofts
In Freeman Wills Crofts’ Mystery in the Channel, the master of a passenger ferry running from Newhaven, England, to Dieppe, France, observes a yacht drifting in the channel. Two men are found dead on board. Inspector French of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate and becomes involved in the world of high-powered banking and international intrigue. It is a satisfyingly boaty mystery and recommended for those who like their Golden Age detective fiction with a touch of the nautical.
This is #7 in the Inspector French series. Faded Page currently has five books in the series available (including #11, The 12:30 from Croydon). If you’d like to see more of them on the site, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 1, 2019:
Set in west Texas after the Civil War, The Searchers is a classic western story in which Amos Edwards and his adopted nephew, Martin Pauley, search to find 10-year-old Debbie Edwards. Debbie has been abducted by Comanche Indians in a murder raid that left the remainder of her family dead.
The Searchers is loosely based on the story of Cynthia Ann Parker who was abducted by Comanches in Texas in 1836 when she was about 10 years of age. She remained a captive for over 20 years until she was reintegrated back into white society. While living with the Comanches, she was pursued by several family members but to no avail. She had several children during her captivity, and her oldest, Quannah, became a legendary Comanche chief and oversaw the transition of the tribe to reservation living. The book was made into a movie of the same name in 1956 and directed by John Ford with John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter and Natalie Wood playing lead roles. Although the movie uses much of the original dialogue from the book, it finishes with a different ending.
Alan Le May (June 3, 1899 – April 27, 1964) was an American novelist best known for his two western novels, The Searchers and The Unforgiven. Le May also wrote numerous short stories, short story collections and screenplays during the 1940s and 1950s.
In addition to The Searchers, we also have the collection of short stories, The Bells of San Juan and we will soon have The Unforgiven. If you like these books and want to see more westerns like these on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 15, 2019:
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
If you’re in the mood for a book about transportation, Faded Page has a variety of books about planes, trains, and automobiles for you to try.
Fans of the Hardy Boys may wish to try a Ted Scott Flying Story. This series was produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate from 1927 to 1943 and was written under the Franklin W. Dixon pseudonym. The hero is a daring young aviator very much in the style of Charles Lindbergh, and the books are illustrated with pictures of those classic wooden-frame biplanes that marked the early days of aviation. Faded Page currently has three of the Ted Scott stories on offer: Across the Pacific, Over the Rockies with the Air Mail, and Lost at the South Pole.
If a mystery set on a train (particularly the ever-so-romantic steam train) is more your speed, Faded Page has some mysteries from the Golden Age of detective fiction that might be of interest. Miles Burton’s Death in the Tunnel is one such example. Sir Wilfred Saxonby is travelling alone in a locked compartment on the 5 o’clock train. The train enters a tunnel, and by the time the train exits the tunnel, Saxonby is dead—shot through the heart. Was it suicide? Or was it murder?
Automobile enthusiasts who want a fun children’s story, meanwhile, need look no further than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This is the classic story by Ian Fleming about a magical car that can drive by itself, fly, and even float, and is the vehicle by which Caractacus Potts and his family have a wide range of adventures. If you’ve seen the movie and want to read the original book, now’s your chance.
If you like these books and want to see more transportation-related stories on Faded Page, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 1, 2019:
Clouds of Witness, the second book in the Peter Wimsey series, is close to home for our favourite Piccadilly-based amateur sleuth. His brother, the Duke of Denver, is on trial for the murder of their sister's fiancé. Peter is determined to clear the family name, but for some reason the Duke is stubbornly refusing to cooperate. How could Peter's detecting be more embarrassing than the Duke's potentially hanging?
Clouds of Witness is one of several books by Sayers hosted on Faded Page. Check out the special collection of her works to see what we have available and what’s under development.
If you’d like to help us make more books by Sayers and her crime fiction peers of the Golden Age available on our website, come join us and proofread a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
We are actively scanning Sayer’s book Hangman’s Holiday. This book contains four Lord Peter stories, and six Montague Egg stories. If you sign up now, you can be one of the privileged few selected to help prepare this volume for publication on the fadedpage.com site!
April 15, 2019:
If you are thinking of visiting a national park in Canada, then you might want to take a look at one of our Canadian National Park guidebooks issued by The Geological Survey of Canada. Not only do these guidebooks highlight the roadside lookouts and stops, but they describe in detail the geological aspects of each park. Written by David McCurdy Baird, a Canadian geologist, photographer, and academic, these timeless guidebooks are illustrated and are perfect as an annotated drive through each of the parks.
Our feature guidebook, Jasper National Park, describes in some detail the general aspects of the geology of Jasper National Park: where it is, how the mountains there originated, the rocks of the region and where they came from, and the different shapes of mountains related to the structures of the rocks composing them. The last part comprises a series of notes on what is to be seen at each of the lookouts and roadside stops along the main travel routes. With four different routes annotated, numerous illustrations, and a fully linked index, this guidebook is typical of what you will find in other guidebooks in this series.
We currently have ten titles here at Faded Page, including Kootenay National Park, Prince Edward Island National Park, Waterton Lakes National Park, Yoho National Park, Banff National Park, Rocks and Scenery of Fundy National Park, National Parks in Ontario, Cape Breton Highlands National Park, and The Nakimu Caves, Glacier Dominion Park, B. C..
We invite you to come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 1, 2019:
Precious Bane, published in 1924, is set in the Shropshire region of England in the 1800’s. It tells the story of Prue Sarn, a young woman afflicted with a harelip. Despite her condition and the tragedies that befall her family, Prue manages to survive her hardships and find love, through her own strength and the beauty of her character. The title comes from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and refers both to the love of money, which contributes to Prue’s family’s misfortunes, and her affliction, which is a source of her inner strength.
Mary Webb (1881-1927) was an English novelist and poet who set many of her stories in the Shropshire countryside. Much of her work had fallen out of print until the feminist publisher Virago reprinted several of her novels, including Precious Bane, in the late 1970’s and 1980’s, as part of their Virago Modern Classics imprint. Precious Bane has been adapted many times, for film, television and even musical theatre.
We encourage you to browse through the works of Mary Webb that we have available here at our site. Please consider joining us and proofing a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 15, 2019:
C. S. Forester’s The Good Shepherd is a WWII suspense thriller that was acclaimed as one of the best novels of the year upon publication in 1955. It is the basis for the soon to be released motion picture, Greyhound, which was filmed in the Atlantic off the coast of Canada.
Forester’s central character is George Krause, an American destroyer commander in his mid-40s in command of a supply convoy with a four-ship escort. Krause is a professional sailor who has been at sea for thirteen years in a twenty-year career, and who is encountering naval combat for the first time. He’s a religious man, and his thinking is studded with biblical references, but the references are all highly descriptive of his situation and integral to his character. The mission of Commander George Krause of the United States Navy is to protect a convoy of thirty-seven merchant ships making their way across the icy North Atlantic from America to England. There, they will deliver desperately needed supplies, but only if they can make it through the wolfpack of German submarines that awaits and outnumbers them in the perilous seas. For forty-eight hours Krause will play a desperate cat-and-mouse game against the submarines, combating exhaustion, hunger, and thirst.
We currently have 27 C. S. Forester titles here at Faded Page including the Horatio Hornblower series, with more to come. We invite you to come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 1, 2019:
The Zimiamvian Series by Eric Rücker Eddison
This fantasy series begins with The Worm Ouroboros, first published in 1922. The book describes the protracted war between the domineering King Gorice of Witchland and the Lords of Demonland in an imaginary world that appears mainly medieval and partly reminiscent of Norse sagas. Ouroboros refers to the snake or dragon that swallows its own tail and therefore has no terminus. Like the Ouroboros, the story ends at the same place as it begins, when the heroes realize that their lives have little meaning without the great conflict and wish that it could continue, and their wish is granted.
The work is slightly related to Eddison’s later Zimiamvian Trilogy: Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison and The Mezentian Gate. Collectively all four are referred to as the Zimiamvian Series. The Worm Ouroboros and the Trilogy share references to one character, Lessingham. This is the same Lessingham character who appears in the first chapter of The Worm Ouroboros as a sort of ghost or immaterial astral being and thereafter discreetly disappears and an apparently identical character in Mistress of Mistresses which then becomes much more fully described in A Fish Dinner in Memison. Another character, also called Lessingham, is a main character in Mistress of Mistresses, but the Lessingham of Zimiamvia and the Lessingham of Earth, though connected, are two different people. In The Worm Ouroboros, Lord Juss describes Zimiamvia. The Zimiamvia of the Trilogy fits this description in the sense that it seems to be a world specially created for an incarnation or avatar of Lessingham.
Eddison’s books are written in a meticulously recreated Jacobean prose style, seeded throughout with fragments, acknowledged but often directly copied from his favorite authors and genres. These include Homer and Sappho, Shakespeare and Webster, Norse sagas and French medieval lyric poems.
We offer all four titles described above. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available on our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 15, 2019:
The John Newbery Medal is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association to the author of “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.”
Named for John Newbery, an 18th-century English publisher of juvenile books, the Newbery was proposed by Publishers Weekly editor Frederic G. Melcher in 1921, making it the first children’s book award in the world. The medal was designed by Rene Paul Chambellan and depicts an author giving his work (a book) to a boy and a girl to read.
In 1923 the award went to Hugh Lofting’s The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle, the second Doctor Doolittle book in which the Doctor meets Tommy Stubbins, the young son of the local cobbler, who becomes his new assistant. Tommy learns how to speak animal languages and becomes involved in the Doctor’s quest to find Long Arrow, the greatest naturalist in the world.
In 1924 the award went to Charles Boardman Hawes’ The Dark Frigate, a rousing tale with bloody battles, brutal buccaneers, and a bold, spirited hero, to enthrall young listeners in search of seafaring adventure.
Charles Finger won the award in 1925 for Tales from Silver Lands, a collection of nineteen folktales from the native populations of Central and South America.
The 1927 award went to Dhan Gopal Mukerji’s Gay-Neck, The Story of a Pigeon. For a pigeon, life is a repetition of two activities: a quest for food and avoidance of attacks by its enemies. If the hero in this story repeats his escapes from attacks by hawks, it is because that is the sort of mishap that becomes chronic in the case of pigeons.
In 1932 the award went to Laura Adams Armer’s Waterless Mountain, the story of a Navajo Indian living in Arizona in the 1920s who wishes to follow in the footsteps of his uncle and become a medicine man.
In addition to these titles currently at Faded Page, more Newbery Award titles are coming. We invite you to come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 1, 2019:
This month, we feature Ulysses to commemorate the birthday of James Joyce on February 2. Ulysses is a notorious book. First published in 1922, it describes the intertwined lives of several people, most notably Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, in thought and action throughout a single day 16 June 1904, in Dublin, Ireland. The New York Times has described Ulysses as “the most prominent landmark in modernist literature”. Both the Modern Library and The Guardian place it in their top 100 novels lists. It has not always received such praise. Its explicit sexuality shocked, and so the US Post Office declared it obscene, a decision not overturned until 1933. Modern readers will find the explicit sexuality less shocking, but they will be more aware of the casual sexism and racism portrayed, and saddened by the degree of anti-semitism that Joyce’s characters encounter.
So, why is the book so highly regarded? Joyce was a sculptor of words but, unlike those who work in stone or clay, he resembled more the mixed media artist who constructs using a range of materials. This has given him a reputation as a “difficult” author. He depicted life’s complexities through exploring multiple narrative styles, using wide-ranging cultural and social references, and applying playful language and dialogue. Like life, it’s complicated. And, as you might expect from a foremost author, he pushed the boundaries of literary practice, innovating in the use of stream of consciousness and interior monologue to great effect.
In Joyce’s last book, Finnegans Wake, his exploration of language and structure is taken to a new level. Thought by some to be a recreation of the dream world, it uses stream of consciousness, wide-ranging linguistic and cultural allusions, and playful language. It perhaps achieved a peak of innovative writing that few scale or appreciate.
James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish writer who, in his early twenties, left with his partner, Nora Barnacle, for self-imposed exile in Europe. They spent most of his life in Zurich, Trieste and Paris. Nevertheless, his writings were all based in Dublin. In their early years in Europe, he supported them through language teaching. As his reputation as an avant-garde writer rose, he gained financial support from wealthy patrons, which continued to the end of his days. Joyce suffered chronic eye problems and mental illness. He died following abdominal surgery. His literary legacy is celebrated each year on 16 June, now known as Bloomsday.
To help us make available other important public-domain works like this one, please join us and proof a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 15, 2019:
Peyton Place is a 1956 novel describing how three women are forced to come to terms with their identity, both as women and as sexual beings, in a small, conservative, gossipy New England town. Considered scandalous at the time of its release, the story is filled with recurring themes of hypocrisy, social inequities and class privilege in a tale that includes incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder.
The novel remained on the New York Times best seller list for 59 weeks and spawned a franchise that would run through four decades: a 1957 movie, a follow-up novel, Return to Peyton Place, filmed in 1961, and a 1964 TV series which ran for 5 years.
The fictional Peyton Place setting appears to be a composite of several New Hampshire towns: Gilmanton, Gilford, Laconia, Manchester and Plymouth, where some of the work was written. The novel originally had the working title The Tree and the Blossom, but Grace considered it too long. She and her husband, George, first considered Potter Place (a real community near Andover, New Hampshire). Realizing their town should have a fictional name, they looked through an atlas and found Payton (a real town in Texas). They combined that with Place and changed the “a” to an “e”. Thus, Peyton Place was created.
Grace Metalious (September 8, 1924 – February 25, 1964) was born Marie Grace DeRepentigny into poverty and a broken home in the mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire. After graduation from high school, she married George Metalious and became a housewife and mother. At the age of 30, she began work on a manuscript about the dark secrets of a small New England town. She found a literary agent and Peyton Place, her first novel, became an immediate bestseller. Her other novels sold well but never achieved the same success. Suffering from cirrhosis of the liver from years of heavy drinking, she died at age 39.
To help us make available other important Canadian public-domain works like this one, join us and proof a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 1, 2019:
Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (1878 – 1957) was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of novels, short stories and plays. His most well-known work is in the fantasy genre and he published under the name of Lord Dunsany. Plunkett was also an avid chess player and invented a variant called “Dunsany’s Chess” in which one side has the standard chess pieces while the other has 32 pawns.
The Jest of Hahalaba is a one-act play set in the final hours of 1928. Sir Arthur Strangways enlists an alchemist to summon the unpredictable and mischievous spirit of Laughter. Though the alchemist warns of possible dire consequences, Sir Arthur’s greed leads him to invoke the spirit and receive a shocking surprise as the New Year arrives.
Here at Faded Page, we have a number of Lord Dunsany’s works, including his popular high-fantasy novel, The King of Elfland’s Daughter. If you would like to help us add more works like this to the public domain, come join us and proofread a few pages. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 15, 2018:
If your Christmas tastes tend to the heartwarming and sentimental, you may wish to try a couple of short stories by Lucy Maud Montgomery that are set during the Christmas season: “A Christmas of Long Ago” and “Ted’s Double: A Christmas Folly”. At 7 and 12 pages respectively, they can be easily tucked into the short spaces between tree-trimming, carolling, shopping, and other holiday-related tasks and events. They are best served with a roaring fire, hot cocoa, and a cosy blanket.
These are just two of many Montgomery short stories (and novels) available on Faded Page and listed on Montgomery’s Special Collections page. If you’d like to help us add more of her work to the public domain, come join us and proofread a few pages. Your contribution is very much appreciated. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 1, 2018:
Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès est la deuxième volume d’histoires mettant en vedette le gentleman-cambrioleur Arsène Lupin. Dans cette volume, Lupin s’oppose au détective londonien célèbre Sherlock… oups, on veut dire HERLOCK Sholmès. Ce détective est effectivement une copie transparente du détective le plus reconnu du monde. En effet, Maurice Leblanc (l’écrivain qui a créé le personnage d’Arsène Lupin) et sir Arthur Conan Doyle ont vécu des carrières semblables, ayant créé tous les deux des personnages qui étaient devenus impossibles à tuer.
Sur la site Web de Faded Page on peut lire 8 volumes du Canon lupinien, dont Le Bouchon de cristal et La Cagliostro se venge.
Si vous aimeriez voir plus de livres, romans, nouvelles, etc. en français sur la site Web de FadedPage, joignez-vous à nous et corriger quelques pages. Vous serez les bienvenus! Si faire du bénévolat avec nous vous intéresse, vous pouvez vous en informer sur notre site Web associé, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès is the second collection of stories featuring gentleman-thief Arsène Lupin. In this collection, Lupin faces off against celebrated London detective Sherlock…oops, I mean HERLOCK Sholmes. Sholmes is quite clearly a copy of the best-known detective in the world. Both Maurice Leblanc (the creator of Arsène Lupin) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had similar careers, in that they both created characters that ended up becoming impossible to kill off.
On FadedPage.com you can read 8 books in the Lupin series in the original French, such as Le Bouchon de cristal and La Cagliostro se venge.
If you want to see more books, novels, short stories, and so on in French on FadedPage.com, come join us and proofread a few pages. Your contribution is appreciated! Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 15, 2018:
Destry Rides Again is the story of Harrison Destry’s quest for revenge against the 12 jurors whose personal malice leads them to wrongfully convict him of robbery. When he gets out on good behavior, he plans his revenge. He does not murder any of them, though he kills some in self-defense. Instead, he systematically sets about ruining each of the jurors’ lives.
As one of Max Brand’s most famous works, it remained in print 70 years after its first publication. Destry Rides Again was first published in 1930, in a series of installments under the title “Twelve Peers” in Western Story Magazine. It was republished as a paperback later that year under the title Destry Rides Again. The word “again” in the title refers to Destry’s renewed freedom to ride after being let out of prison, not to any previous story; this novel was the Destry character’s fiction debut. This title was later made into 3 films starring Tom Mix and Jimmy Stewart, a Broadway musical and a TV series.
Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944) was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns under the pen name Max Brand. Faust’s other pseudonyms include Frank Austin, George Owen Baxter, Walter C Butler, George Challis, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, David Manning, Peter Henry Morland, and Peter Ward. Faust (as Max Brand) also created the popular fictional character of young medical intern Dr. James Kildare in a series of pulp-fiction stories which later became a popular TV series. Wanting to write a good war novel, Faust in late 1944 got an assignment with Harper’s Magazine as a war correspondent. While in Italy traveling with American soldiers, he was mortally wounded by shrapnel.
We currently have 43 Frederick Faust titles here at Faded Page with more to come. We invite you to come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 1, 2018:
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day on November 11, we present Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae's In Flanders Fields and Other Poems. The most notable work in this collection, the poem “In Flanders Fields”, was written while he was waiting for the wounded to arrive at his dugout in Flanders, Belgium. It was inspired particularly by the death of a friend on May 2, 1915. Published in the London magazine Punch in December 1915, it rapidly became the most popular English-language poem of the war. The poem has made the poppy the enduring symbol of the war dead of the British empire and a lasting symbol of self-sacrifice in war. This book contains most of the poems that he wrote and submitted to various publications over the years of his medical career. There is also a biographical essay by Sir Andrew Macphail.
On January 28, 1918, McCrae died of pneumonia and meningitis; he was 45 years old. He was buried with full military honours in the cemetery at Wimereux, France. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography website contains more information on John McCrae. There is also a commemorative vignette that was created by Historica Canada for their Heritage Minutes Collection. There are several museums in Canada that commemorate John McCrae's life. In 1946, John McCrae was declared a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada.
To help us make available other important Canadian public-domain works like this one, join us and proof a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 15, 2018:
For Halloween, we bring you the ultimate haunted-house story. The Haunting of Hill House is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar; Theodora, his assistant; Eleanor, a friendless fragile acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the heir of Hill House. Unexplained events occur and the house seems to become a living organism. Within a few days, the guests come to believe that Hill House will take one of them as its own. Using complex relationships between the events in the house and the characters’ psyches, the novel relies on terror rather than horror to elicit emotion in the reader.
Stephen King said, “Shirley Jackson’s Hill House is as nearly perfect a haunted-house tale as I have ever read.” It is widely regarded by many critics as the greatest haunted-house story ever written. The story has been made into two full feature films and a brand new TV series was just released.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) was an American writer known for her works in gothic horror and mystery. She produced over 200 short stories, six novels, and 2 memoirs during her lifetime. Her most famous story “The Lottery” won the 1949 O. Henry Prize and has been filmed three times.
If you like this book and want to help make more Canadian public-domain novels available to enjoy, join us and proof a few pages. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 1, 2018:
The Battles That Changed History, published in 1956, explains in one volume the political and social context of sixteen conflicts that changed the history of the world. From the time of Alexander the Great at Arbela to the Campaign Against Quebec to the Battle of Midway, each of the conflicts represent a pivotal situation-a scenario in which a different outcome would have resulted in a radically altered world. With over 25 maps, Pratt explains the political and social context of each battle or campaign, gives a detailed account of the battle, and then explains why it was decisive in history.
Fletcher Platt (1897-1956) was an established science fiction and fantasy writer who was also a noted author on naval history and Civil War history. Wargamers know Pratt as the inventor of a set of rules for civilian naval wargaming before the Second World War known as the “Naval War Game”. He authored 36 other biography and war history titles on the War of 1812, World War II, the American Civil War, and the Napoleonic Wars.
We invite you to come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 15, 2018:
Flatland, first published in 1884, is an explanation of multiple space dimensions, with illustrations, in the form of a story that satirizes Victorian conventions. Loved by both mathematicians and non-specialists, this classic has been adapted to short films several times and referenced frequently in popular culture. The narrator of the story, A Square, lives in a flat two-dimensional world in which women are simple lines while men are polygons whose numbers of sides increase with status. A Square’s life changes when he is visited by A Sphere, who comes from a three-dimensional world.
At the time of publication, some criticized Abbott’s depiction of women, but as a reply, he wrote that the portrayal was meant to satirize existing viewpoints. Abbott (1838-1926) had a distinguished career as a schoolmaster, theologian and writer, and he wrote a number of other scholarly works. One of these is a textbook on the English language, How to Parse, subtitled An Attempt to Apply the Principles of Scholarship to English Grammar.
We invite you to come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 1, 2018:
Arthur Ransome (1884-1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children’s books about the school-holiday adventures of children in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. He also wrote about the literary life of London, with biographies on Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, and about Russia before, during, and after the revolutions of 1917. He had initially moved to Russia in 1913 to study Russian folklore but when war broke out, he covered the Eastern Front as a foreign correspondent.
Ransome began writing Swallows and Amazons in 1929 when he moved to the English Lake District, an area he was familiar with from childhood memories of regular family holidays. His familiarity with the area and his yacht sailing experience provide the geographic and sailing details for his stories, although many of the story locations are invented. Swallows and Amazons and 4 sequels, Swallowdale, Winter Holiday, Pigeon Post and The Picts and the Martyrs are set in the Lake District. When he moved to East Anglia, he began using actual existing landscape locations: Coot Club and The Big Six in the Norfolk Broads, and We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea and Secret Water in coastal Suffolk and Essex.
Swallows and Amazons tells the story of the Walker children, who sail a dinghy named Swallow, and the Blackett children, who sail a dinghy named Amazon. The Walkers consider themselves explorers, while the Blacketts declare themselves pirates. The children meet on an island in the lake and have a series of adventures that weave imaginative tales of pirates and exploration into everyday life in inter-war rural England. In subsequent adventures, the children change roles and become explorers in the Lake District, East Anglia and abroad.
Here at Faded Page we have all twelve Swallows and Amazons titles. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 15, 2018:
After making his fortune, James Lessiter returns to his home village to reclaim the family estate, but few of the villagers are happy to see his return. When he is found murdered, a number of suspects with various motives emerge. Luckily, Maud Silver, visiting an old friend in the village, is on hand to unravel the mystery...
Miss Silver is the creation of crime novelist Dora Amy Elles (1878-1961), better known as Patricia Wentworth. She is frequently compared to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, another clever elderly spinster who considers the puzzles put before her while busily engaged with her knitting needles. However, Maud Silver, a former governess and teacher, is more of a professional, no-nonsense character, often working closely with Scotland Yard.
Wentworth wrote 32 Miss Silver mysteries, as well as 34 other books, many of them standalone mystery novels. Most of her books are available in our Patricia Wentworth Special Collection. If you would like to help us work toward completing this collection and adding other books like these to Faded Page, please consider volunteering at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 1, 2018:
Earl Derr Biggers (1884-1933) was an American novelist and playwright who is best known for his creation of the Chinese American detective character, Charlie Chan. Biggers began as a newspaper journalist in Ohio, but with his first novel, Seven Keys to Baldpate, in 1913, he became a public success with a Broadway play and 5 film versions to follow over the next 30 years. When the financial rewards made it possible for him to take, in his words, a “little trip to Honolulu,” the concept of the Charlie Chan character and series of detective novels was born.
In the first novel of this series, The House Without a Key, detective Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department works to solve a murder committed at a beach house in Honolulu. In the story, John Quincy Winterslip, a young Bostonian, provides the romantic interest for the daughter of a prime suspect, as well as investigative assistance to Mr. Chan in solving the mystery murder.
The book title is named after the restaurant of the Halekulani Hotel on Waikiki Beach where Biggers stayed while writing the novel. Biggers claimed that the Charlie Chan character was inspired by the real-life Honolulu detective, Chang Apana.
In addition to four other Charlie Chan titles including Behind That Curtain and The Black Camel, we offer Fifty Candles, a mystery novella also set in Hawaii. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 15, 2018:
In our effort to provide new and interesting titles of all genres, we at Faded Page introduce our first books with audio files. The audio files are in the form of MIDI (.mid) files included with the downloads, and they are used to enhance the text or provide an audio accompaniment to illustrated musical scores in the e-book. These .mid files can be heard by clicking on the [Listen] or [Play] box in the text using most major browsers and on most e-readers with audio capability.
We invite you to browse through our first audio e-books beginning with The Music of Bach: an Introduction by Charles Sanford Terry, a non-technical "guide" to the music of J. S. Bach, describing how his music was influenced by his surroundings and the times. Other titles with audio files are Shakespearean Music in the Plays and Early Operas by Sir Frederick Bridge, which includes a musical appendix containing .mid files and sheet music in .pdf format, and Whistling as an Art by Agnes Woodward, a handbook describing methods for the development of tone, technique and style in whistling.
Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available at our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 1, 2018:
Painting by Lorne Kidd Smith.
Happy Canada Day!
June 24, 2018, is the 205th anniversary of the Battle of Beaver Dams, a battle during the War of 1812 that has become somewhat mythologized in Canada. The story runs that American troops billeted at the home of Laura and James Secord were discussing plans to ambush the British troops at Beaver Dams, and Laura, overhearing these plans, set out on a 20-mile (32 km) walk to warn the troops. Armed with this information, the British were able to defeat the Americans.
Among the Canadiana in Faded Page’s collection is Laura the Undaunted: A Canadian Historical Romance, by John Price-Brown. This story, published in 1930 by Ryerson Press, covers Laura’s early years and culminates in the War of 1812. Have some of Laura’s namesake chocolate while you enjoy this short novel (clocking in at 105 pages).
If you like this book and want to help make more Canadian public-domain novels available to enjoy, join us and proof a page or two. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site, Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 15, 2018:
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (26 August 1875 to 11 February 1940), was a lawyer, journalist, novelist, and the 15th Governor General of Canada. Buchan wrote in a variety of genres: spy fiction, short stories, biography, and history. He also established the first proper library at Rideau Hall (the Governor General’s official residence) and founded the Governor General’s Literary Awards, which continue to this day as Canada’s premier literature award.
The Thirty-Nine Steps is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay and is Buchan’s best-known work. Hannay, a Scottish mining engineer, has come from Rhodesia to London to start a new life for himself. Within days, he’s found a man dead in his flat and himself on the run in southwestern Scotland as he tries to prevent the assassination of a visiting political leader. This book has been adapted several times, most notably in 1935 by Alfred Hitchcock, with Robert Donat portraying Hannay.
Here at Faded Page, we also have books 4 and 5 in the Richard Hannay series (The Three Hostages and The Island of Sheep), as well as examples of Buchan’s biographies (Sir Walter Scott), retellings of Scottish legends (Witch Wood), and his own memoir (Memory Hold-the-Door).
If you like these books, come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring even more public domain titles to Canada. For more information about how to volunteer, check out our companion site: Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 1, 2018:
Stephen Butler Leacock (1869-1944) was a teacher, writer, humourist and political scientist, whose works remain popular and widely read today. On June 9, the annual Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour will be presented to a Canadian writer for the best book of humour written in the past year. This is one of the oldest and most prestigious literary awards in Canada and the presentation is held in Leacock’s hometown of Orillia, Ontario.
We invite you to browse through our extensive special collection: The Works of Stephen Leacock. This includes very popular works such as Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, a collection of humorous short stories set in an Ontario town, as well as less readily available works such as Leacock’s doctoral thesis, The Doctrine of Laissez Faire: A Critical Essay on the Evolution of Theory and Practice in Reference to the Economic Functions of the Modern State.
Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 15, 2018:
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis is a seven-book fantasy series with the first book released in 1950 and subsequent books published in each of the following years. Over 100 million copies have been sold in 47 languages worldwide, making it his best-known work.
The first book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, begins with four children who have been evacuated to the English countryside during WWII. They discover a wardrobe in the home of their host which leads to the land of Narnia. They meet Aslan, a talking lion, and help him save Narnia from an evil witch. They then become kings and queens, and they re-establish the magical realm.
C.S. Lewis hosted three girls outside Oxford during the War and acknowledges this experience as one of the primary influences on his Narnia story creation. Other influences include his early childhood home in Belfast that stimulated his imagination as a boy, his wide readings in medieval Celtic literature and cosmology, and his deep Christian beliefs, evident in his other writings, which are subtly introduced in Narnia.
We offer all seven titles of the series: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and his Boy, The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 1, 2018:
Here in Canada, Faded Page’s home, May marks the start of the gardening season for a good number of people. It thus seems timely to consider Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell (1882-1959). The novel presents a comic portrait of Bert Pinnegar, head gardener at a British country house. A humorous and gentle book, with bits of gardening wisdom throughout, this book will likely appeal to those who love the views of gardens in the television series Downton Abbey or descriptions of country manor gardens and their gardeners in Agatha Christie’s novels.
Reginald Arkell, born at Gloucestershire, England, was a scriptwriter, novelist and poet. He wrote a number of musical plays for London theatre. Here at Faded Page, we also have Green Fingers: a Present for a Good Gardener. This is a collection of poems, again with a gardening theme.
If bad weather prevents you from indulging your love of gardening or taking a walk through your favourite gardens, then do consider browsing through one of Arkell’s books or volunteering to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 15, 2018:
Mary Grant Bruce (1878-1958) was an Australian children’s author and journalist who began writing at the age of six. While spending most of her childhood on her grandfather’s cattle station in Victoria, she developed a love of horses and the Bush which is reflected in her books. Bruce is most famous for her Billabong series following the adventures of the Linton family on Billabong Station in Victoria and in England and Ireland during WWI.
In Billabong Riders, the final book of the Billabong series, the story revolves around a cattle drive in Queensland with electrical storms and cranky bulls stampeding the herd, cattle thieves, and a happy ending with all set to rights. As with most of Bruce’s 39 stories, common themes prevail: the Australian Bush values of independence, hard physical labour by all, mateship, ANZAC spirit, and Bush hospitality.
We offer 15 other books from the Billabong series, the Peter series, and other titles, with more Mary Grant Bruce books to come. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 1, 2018:
Edward Elmer (“Doc”) Smith (1890-1965) was an American lumberjack, farmer, streetcar operator, railroad worker, asphalt hauler, rock miner, food chemist, explosive engineer and writer. He pioneered the field of doughnut mixes and created the science fiction genre known as space opera with his first series beginning with The Skylark of Space. His most popular series, however, was the Lensman series.
Galactic Patrol was the first set of Lensman stories published in 1937 in the magazine Astounding Stories to be consolidated and to introduce the series in book format. Kimball Kinnison, the series hero, is introduced and carried forward into the books of the series which follow: Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensmen and Children of the Lens. Kinnison and other Lensmen with psychic powers are participants in large-scale battles between Good and Evil, where alien races sort themselves into the allies (Civilization and their sponsors the Arisia) and the enemy (Boskone with their sponsors the Eddore). Each faction is the pawn of a different race of advanced aliens who each have a grand plan for the sentient beings of the universe.
After four books of the series were published, Smith was encouraged to expand the series and rewrote Triplanetary to be the first book of the Lensman series and wrote First Lensman as a link between Triplanetary and Galactic Patrol. Masters of the Vortex was written later as a sequel.
We offer 15 Doc Smith titles including the complete Lensman series and the complete Skylark series. Come join us and proof a few pages to help bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 15, 2018:
As we celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17, it is fitting to consider Irish novelist, short-story writer and poet James Joyce, one of the most important writers of the 20th century. He is best known for the colossal work Ulysses, written in a stream-of-consciousness style and considered by many to be among the greatest literary works of all time.
Finnegans Wake, written after Ulysses, takes Joyce’s experimental style even further, and it has been called one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Anthony Burgess has praised the work as “a great comic vision” while Harold Bloom considers this work Joyce’s masterpiece. We hesitate to offer a plot summary here, as even literary experts cannot provide a common interpretation. Instead, we invite you to take a look at the work yourself, if you are up to the challenge!
Finnegan’s Wake was listed among Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels. A number of others are available here at Faded Page, including George Orwell’s 1984 and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Come join us and proof a few pages to help bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. Information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 1, 2018:
James Hilton (1900-1954) was an English novelist who began his career as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian. He moved to Hollywood in the mid-1930’s and wrote numerous screenplays, winning an Academy Award in 1942 for Mrs. Miniver. However, he is best known for his books Lost Horizon and Good-by Mr. Chips.
Good-by Mr. Chips is a novella about the life a schoolteacher, Mr. Chipping. Mr. Chips, as the boys call him, is conventional in his beliefs and exercises firm discipline. His views and manner change when he marries Katherine. She subsequently charms students, teachers, and school governors. Mr. Chips is an effective teacher, highly regarded by students and governors and, in his later years, develops a sense of humor that pleases all. Hilton’s father, headmaster of Chapel End School, and W. H. Balgarmie, as master at The Leys school where Hilton attended, are both credited as the inspiration for the character Mr. Chips. The story became the basis for two movies and two television productions.
We offer other works by James Hilton, including Time and Time Again and The Meadows of the Moon. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 15, 2018:
Lester Bernard Dent (1904-1959) was an American pulp fiction writer best known as the creator and main author of the series about the superhuman scientist and adventurer, Doc Savage. Dent began as a telegrapher for Western Union and later the Associated Press where he started writing while working the graveyard shift. His first publication in 1929 got him noticed by pulp publishers and he was hired and moved to New York. Among authors, Dent is known for his “Lester Dent Formula”, a guide for writing a salable 6,000-word pulp story.
Under the house name, Kenneth Robeson, the first issue of the Doc Savage Magazine in March 1933 was The Man of Bronze with Walter Baumhofer as illustrator. In the story, Doc Savage engages in deadly combat with the red-fingered survivors of an ancient, lost civilization. With his amazing crew he journeys to the mysterious “lost valley” to search for a fabulous treasure and destroy the mysterious Red Death. The story became the basis for the 1975 movie Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze.
We offer 12 other Doc Savage titles by Lester Dent, including The Mystic Mullah, Meteor Menace, and The Thousand-Headed Man. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 1, 2018:
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, February 14, we feature The Lover’s Baedeker and Guide to Arcady by Carolyn Wells with illustrations by A. D. Blashfield. Written as a humorous travel guide for lovers, the author, through poetry, prose and illustrations, describes a fantasy land called Arcady in the country of Agapemone which is inhabited by lovers and cupids.
Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) began writing children’s books, humor, and poetry her first ten years as an author. Around 1910, she heard the reading of a mystery novel and from that point forward, she devoted her writing to the mystery genre. With over 170 books and newspaper articles to her credit, she is best known for her Fleming Stone (detective) series and Patty Fairfield series.
Faded Page has 23 other titles by Carolyn Wells including The Clue, The Curved Blades, and Patty’s Motor Car, with more titles to come. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 15, 2018:
Virginia Woolf is a celebrated novelist and essayist, who was one of the first of the Modernist writers to use the stream-of-consciousness technique. We celebrate Woolf’s birthday on January 25 by presenting Orlando: A Biography, first published on 11 October 1928. One of Woolf’s most popular novels, this story takes a satiric look at the history of English literature while featuring the adventures of Orlando, a poet who changes sex over the centuries. This book has an important place in feminist and transgender literature. It is inspired by Vita Sackville-West, a writer whose own poetry and novels we feature here at Faded Page and with whom Woolf had a romantic relationship.
We offer other works by Virginia Woolf, including the well-known feminist essay, “A Room of One’s Own”, the novel The Waves and the collection, A Haunted House and Other Short Stories. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 1, 2018:
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?”
In the spirit of Hogmanay, or New Year’s Eve, we feature a series of books on the life of Scottish national poet, Robert Burns (1759-1796). Burns is credited with bringing the words and song of “Auld Lang Syne” to countries around the world on December 31 each year.
The song has roots in an old Scottish ballad about a disappointed lover and a popular dance tune that evoked a country wedding. Robert Burns transformed the old song in 1788, but it was not printed until 1796 just after his death. Robert Burns is best known as the national poet of Scotland. As well as writing original compositions of poetry and verse, he also collected folk songs, often revising and adapting them. His birthday, January 25, is celebrated at Burns suppers world-wide where his poem “Address to the Haggis” is recited before the meal.
To celebrate the poet who created “Auld Lang Syne”, Faded Page offers the five-part Immortal Memory series by James William Barke on the life and loves of Robert Burns beginning with The Wind that Shakes the Barley. This is followed in sequence by The Song in the Green Thorn Tree, The Wonder of All the Gay World, The Crest of the Broken Wave and The Well of the Silent Harp. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 15, 2017:
Charles Dickens (1812-1870), at this time of year, is best known for his book A Christmas Carol. His other Christmas story, “A Christmas Tree”, first appeared in the weekly magazine, In Household Words, founded and edited by Dickens himself. This short story is considered an autobiographical piece portraying his lifelong fascination with Christmas and his fondness for his idyllic childhood Christmas memories.
The story told by an elderly Dickens reminisces of holidays past, beginning with the gifts and toys that surround and decorate the Christmas tree. Each ornament recalls a memory as he moves up the tree branch by branch. The story moves to a few ghost stories related to the various childhood haunts visited during holidays before ending back on a reflective note around the Christmas Tree.
To celebrate Christmas, Faded Page offers a number of Christmas short stories including Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “A Christmas of Long Ago”, John Felter’s “Happy Hearts” and Margery Allingham’s “Word in Season. A Story for Christmas”. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
December 1, 2017:
“La Carriole rouge” by Clarence Gagnon
December brings the beginning of cold, wintry weather, at least for those of us in the Northern hemisphere. We would like to suggest you sample one or more of the following books. It’s a perfect way to experience the chilly weather vicariously, perhaps in front of a warm fire with a hot drink at your side.
- Susannah of the Yukon by Muriel Denison (adventure, children)
- Arctic Mood by Eva Alvey Richards (autobiography)
- Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by J. Jefferson Farjeon (mystery)
- The Woods in Winter by L. M. Montgomery (non-fiction, essay)
- The Snow Man by Hans Christian Anderson (fairy tale)
- Freddy Goes to the North Pole by Walter R. Brooks (adventure, children)
- The Arctic Prairies by Ernest Thompson Seton (non-fiction, travel)
- The Winter Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine (mystery)
- The Siege and Conquest of the North Pole by George Bryce (non-fiction, exploration)
- Tom Swift and His Flying Boat by Victor Appleton (adventure, young adult)
If you enjoy these books, then come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring even more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 15, 2017:
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, westerns, and modern fiction, who is best known for his creations of the jungle hero Tarzan, the Mars adventurer John Carter, and the Venus adventurer Carson Napier. Against the advice of many experts, Burroughs was an early pioneer in syndication and syndicated comic strips, movies, TV shows, and merchandise around his newly created Tarzan character. With the Tarzan proceeds, he was able to buy his ranch, "Tarzana", now in the Los Angeles community of Tarzana, and develop other characters including the John Carter and Carson Napier characters of the Mars and Venus series.
In Pirates of Venus, the first of the five-part Venus or Amtor series, Carson Napier in attempting a solo mission to Mars, crash lands on Venus, known by the inhabitants as Amtor, and meets his first princess. During the course of the series, he meets various peoples, becomes a pirate, escapes the Room of the Seven Doors, is made a prince, and rescues princesses along the way.
Here at Faded Page we have the entire Amtor Series in individual volumes and as a specially compiled compendium, Chronicles of Amtor, along with nine other Burroughs Tarzan and western titles. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
November 1, 2017:
November 11 is celebrated as Remembrance Day, Veteran’s Day or Armistice Day in various parts of the world to commemorate the end of World War I. A fitting way to celebrate the day is to read Coningsby Dawson’s collection of wartime letters, edited and annotated by his father W. J. Dawson. In the introduction to this volume of letters, his father refers to them as a “record of how the dreadful yet heroic realities of war affect an unusually sensitive mind.”
Coningsby Dawson (1883-1959) was born in England and lived in the United States before he and his family moved to Canada. He served with the Canadian Army throughout World War I. Dawson was already an established writer of short stories, poetry and novels before the war and continued his writing career after his return.
Faded Page has a large number of works, both fiction and non-fiction, concerning the Great War, including In Flanders Fields and Other Poems by John McCrae, featured here previously. You are welcome to join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles like these to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 15, 2017:
In the spirit of Hallowe’en, celebrated on October 31, the eve of All Saints’ Day, we have a collection of ghost stories by one of the master storytellers of this genre, a man admired even by H. P. Lovecraft.
Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) was an English medievalist scholar and Provost of King’s College at Cambridge and Eton College who, under the pen name of M.R. James, is recognized as the originator of the “antiquarian ghost story”. He perfected his storytelling method in what is now known as the “Jamesian” method where each tale usually includes three elements: a setting in an English town, seaside village, abbey or country estate; a naive and indistinguishable gentleman-scholar as protagonist; and the discovery of an antiquarian object that attracts the unwelcome attention of a supernatural menace.
The Collected Ghost Stories is a compilation of four of James’s short-story volumes and includes 31 ghost stories including “Rats”, “The Haunted Dolls’ House”, and “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to you, My Lad”.
In addition to The Collected Ghost Stories, Faded Page also has 33 other titles by M.R. James including Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
October 1, 2017:
Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960) was an English novelist, aeronautical engineer and pilot who spent his later years in Australia. Beginning in 1926 under his pen name Nevil Shute, he began publishing his novels centered around common themes including: the dignity of work; the bridging of social barriers of class, race or religion; and the newfound delights of an adopted country. Many of his books have been filmed or serialized for television and radio including A Town Like Alice.
In A Town Like Alice, the hero and heroine meet while both are prisoners of the Japanese in Malaya. After the war, they seek each other out and reunite in a small Australian town that would have no future if not for her plans to turn it into “a town like Alice.” This book was published as The Legacy in the United States.
Faded Page also has 19 other titles by Nevil Shute here including On the Beach and No Highway with more titles to come. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 15, 2017:
Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952), better known as Josephine Tey, was a writer of mysteries, historical fiction, non-fiction and plays, some of which were published under a second pseudonym, Gordon Daviot. Her best known works are the books in the Inspector Alan Grant series. This includes The Daughter of Time, in which Grant digs deep into the past to determine whether King Richard III had indeed murdered his nephews.
The Man in the Queue, published in 1929, is the first in the Inspector Grant series. In this novel, a man standing in a queue for a popular theatre production is stabbed while surrounded by a crowd of fellow theatre-goers. The search for the victim’s and assailant’s identities sends Grant first through the streets of London and then to the Highlands of Scotland.
Here at Faded Page, we are proud to be able to offer all six of the Inspector Grant series and well as other notable works by MacKintosh. The complete list of available works can be found here. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
September 1, 2017:
Maurice Walsh (1879-1964) was an Irish-born novelist and best-selling author in Ireland during the 1930’s. In 1901, he began working as a revenue officer and was posted to Scotland. He started writing short stories and when the Irish Free State was formed in 1922, Walsh transferred to the excise service and moved to Dublin. As an Irish nationalist, he made one of his characters, Hugh Forbes, an active fighter against the Black and Tans in many of his novels.
Green Rushes is a collection of connected stories about the lives of a group of men and women who fight in the Black and Tan War. One story, “The Quiet Man”, was Walsh’s most famous story and later became the basis for the 1952 movie of that name starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
In addition to Green Rushes, Faded Page also has other titles by Maurice Walsh including The Small Dark Man and The Key Above the Door with more to come. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 15, 2017:
Raymond King Cummings (1887-1957) was an American science fiction author known as one of the founding fathers of the “science-fiction pulp” genre. He initially began working as a technical writer for Thomas Edison until 1919 when his first short story “The Girl in the Golden Atom” was published to became a full-size novel in 1922. Publishing over 750 novels and short stories under his name and various pen names including Ray King, Gabrielle Cummings and Gabriel Wilson, Cummings also anonymously scripted comic book stories for Timely Comics, the predecessor to Marvel Comics. He is best known for his quote, “Time . . . is what keeps everything from happening at once.” Time becomes the theme for many of his later novels and short stories.
In The Exile of Time, a girl is kidnapped in 1777 and brought into modern New York by a man and his mechanical servant. The strange man and his servant have been seen in other centuries, and a sinister plot on cities in the future unfolds.
In addition to The Exiles of Time, Faded Page also has 40 other titles by Ray Cummings including The Girl in the Golden Atom. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
August 1, 2017:
Karen Blixen (1885-1962) was born Karen Dinesen and came from a wealthy farming/merchant family in Denmark. She married the Baron Bror Blixen after following him to Kenya to start a 6000-acre farm near the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. Although the marriage did not last, the farm, known as M’Bogani, became the focus of her life and writing for the next seventeen years while she remained in Kenya.
The book Out of Africa, originally published under the name Karen Blixen as well as under her pen name Isak Dinesen, recounts events on the farm and her observations of African customs and interactions with white colonists. Originally published in Denmark and the United Kingdom, it gained recognition after its U.S. publication debut and selection as a Book-of-the-Month Club choice. Readers’ imaginations were captured with the first line: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
The book is divided into five sections. The first two sections focus on the Africans who lived on the farm or did business with the farm, while the third section describes the local characters and visitors to the farm. Section four is a collection of short vignettes and stories, each describing a particular event or happening on the farm, and the final section details the loss of Blixen’s farm and friends and her departure back to Denmark.
In addition to Out of Africa, other titles including Seven Gothic Tales will be appearing in the coming months. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more of these public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 15, 2017:
Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) was a wildlife illustrator, writer of animal stories, founder of the Woodcraft League of America, and Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America. Although born in England to Scottish parents, he immigrated, with his family when he was six years old, to Canada where he flourished. A seven-year scholarship to study art in London at the Royal Academy of Art had him returning early to Canada to regain his health after only two years. Moving with a friend out to Manitoba, he began in earnest his drawings and paintings of wildlife and nature. His Birch Bark Roll of Woodcraft Indians sparked a friendship with Lord Baden-Powell which led to the forming of the Boy Scouts movement worldwide, with Seton as Chief Scout for the Boy Scouts of America. Some of Seton's painting and stories were controversial as they were written from the predators' point of view. Eventually these paintings were accepted for exhibition and he was appointed the Official Naturalist to the Government of Manitoba until his death in 1946.
Animal Heroes includes eight stories with over 200 illustrations, detailing the struggle for existence of a slum cat, a homing pigeon, a reindeer, two wolves, a lynx, a bull-terrier and a jack-rabbit.
In addition to Animal Heroes, Faded Page also has The Birch Bark Roll of Woodcraft Indians, Krag and Johnny Bear, and other Seton titles with more to come including The Birds of Manitoba. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
July 1, 2017:
July 1, 2017 marks the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation. Celebrate this momentous birthday with us by browsing through the 32-volume Chronicles of Canada, edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton. This massive work, published between 1900 and 1905, was the first major project completed by Distributed Proofreaders Canada, the volunteer-run group that produces most of the public-domain works you find here at Faded Page.
Chronicles of Canada tells us about the major figures and events of Canadian history from the early Aboriginal beginnings up until Post-Confederation Canada. Its audience was young people and it is written in an engaging manner that makes it more exciting than mere "dry history". Its authors include the well-loved humourist Stephen Leacock, and numerous illustrations and maps can be found throughout its volumes.
We hope you enjoy the nation's Canada Day celebrations, perhaps with fireworks and birthday cake. Afterward, please consider joining our efforts to bring new public-domain titles, including works of historical importance such as that featured here, to readers by volunteering at Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 15, 2017:
Cyril M. Kornbluth (1923-1958) was an American science fiction author who began writing at the age of 7. After graduating high school at 13 and earning a Bronze Star in The Battle of the Bulge as a gunner, he returned to finish school and started writing for publication. Most of his writing was under various pen-names and written as collaborations with Frederick Pohl or Judith Merril. He also wrote several titles under his own name including The Syndic and Not This August. Known for his skill with language and the ability to write over a 1000 words an hour, he was always inserting new words and ideas into his works from his reading of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.
Not This August, also known as Christmas Eve, was published in 1955 and serialized in Maclean’s magazine. The title comes from Ernest Hemingway’s “Notes on the Next War”. In the story, it is 1965 and the U.S. and Canada have been at war with the Soviets and Chinese for 3 years. Europe and Latin America have fallen and Communist forces are approaching Texas. Things get worse when the U.S. capitulates. The Chicago Tribune’s review called it “The most shockingly realistic science fiction book since Orwell’s 1984.”
In addition to Not This August, Faded Page also has The Syndic, The Marching Morons, and 18 other Kornbluth titles, with more to come. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
June 1, 2017:
Lionel Shapiro (1908-1958) was a Canadian journalist, novelist and war correspondent for The Montreal Gazette. During World War II, he participated in the Allied invasion of Sicily, Salerno and Juno Beach on D-Day with the Canadian forces.
The Sixth of June, published in 1955, tells the story of Brad Parker, who joins the U.S. Army to fight in World War II, and Valerie Russell, the English girl he meets in London. Brad and Valerie fall in love despite their loyalties to wife and future husband. Certain as they are of their love and that it could overcome every obstacle, everything changes after the Normandy Invasion on June 6, 1944.
The Sixth of June was awarded the Governor General's Literary Award (GGLA) for English language fiction, and it was subsequently adapted into a Hollywood film. At Faded Page we have other GGLA titles including Stephen Leacock's My Discovery of the West, Alan Sullivan's Three Came to Ville Marie, Ringuet's Trente Arpents and George Hebert Sallan's Little Man. Future GGLA titles coming include Gwethalyn Graham's Swiss Sonata and Earth and High Heaven and Frederick Grove's In Search of Myself. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more of these public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 15, 2017:
On Mother's Day, which has just passed, we celebrated all kinds of mothers, including grandmothers, stepmothers, biological mothers and adoptive mothers. Let's not forget the very important Fairy Godmother, who plays a significant role in the well-loved folk tale Cinderella, also known as The Little Glass Slipper.
You may find it interesting to compare the various versions available here at Faded Page. There is Turner and Fisher's The Admired Fairy Tale of Cinderella, featuring 9 engravings. Then there is the Brothers Dalziel's version of Cinderella, with 6 beautiful colour illustrations. For a different take on the classic fairy tale, we have J. M. Barrie's 1916 play, A Kiss for Cinderella, an adaptation that takes place during the First World War.
If you enjoy these works, look for other fairy-tale collections at Faded Page, such as our Brothers Grimm Special Collection, and consider joining us to help us bring other public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
May 1, 2017:
James Grover Thurber (1894-1961) was an American cartoonist, author, and journalist best known for his cartoons and short stories in which he celebrated the comic frustrations of ordinary people. He began in 1921 as a reporter for Ohio's Columbus Dispatch and later for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers while in Paris. After moving to New York in 1925, he joined as an editor for The New Yorker magazine with the help of E.B. White, his friend and fellow The New Yorker contributor. His cartoonist career began in 1930 after White discovered and submitted some of Thurber's drawings for publication. Thurber continued to publish stories and drawing in The New Yorker until the 1950's. Because he was blinded in one eye in a childhood accident, he drew on large sheets of paper in black crayon or black paper with white chalk. The result was distinctive line drawings of people and dogs which reflected his unique view on life.
In addition to My Life and Hard Times , Faded Page also has Lanterns & Lances, Let Your Mind Alone! and Further Fables for Our Time, with more titles to come. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more Thurber public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 15, 2017:
A brand new adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s famous 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables premiered on CBC March 19. This is only one of many film, stage, radio and television productions that have been made since the very first silent film starring Mary Miles Minter as Anne was released in 1919.
We have no way of knowing what Montgomery would have thought of this new adaptation or of some other hugely popular ones like Road to Avonlea, an award-winning television series that aired 1990-1996. However, we can read her thoughts on several early adaptations in “Is This My Anne?”, an article published in Chatelaine magazine in 1935, and speculate about her reactions to our modern-day interpretations of the characters she had created.
Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring even more public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
April 1, 2017:
C.S. (Cecil Scott) Forester (1899-1966) was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare such as the 11-book Horatio Hornblower saga, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic wars. Two of the Hornblower books, A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours, were jointly awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1938. His other works include The African Queen (adapted to film in 1951 by John Huston).
In Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, the first volume of the saga, we meet Horatio Hornblower, a young man of 17, beginning his career in January 1794 as an inexperienced midshipman in the British Navy fighting against Napoleon and his tyranny of Europe. Bullied and forced into a duel, he takes an even chance. Later, he has many more chances to show his skills and ingenuities: from sailing a ship full of wetted and swelling rice to imprisonment and saving the lives of shipwrecked sailors. Along the way, he fights galleys, feeds cattle, stays out of the way of the guillotine, and makes friends with a Duchess. He becomes a man and develops the strength of character which will make him a hero to his men, and to all England.
Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring the next 10 volumes of the Hornblower saga and 14 other Forester public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 15, 2017:
March 17 is the Feast of St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, and it is a perfect time to discover more about one of Ireland's most renowned writers, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature. Shaw was born in Dublin and moved to England in 1873, where he worked as a playwright, novelist, and music and theatre critic. He was also deeply involved with various political issues, some of them quite contentious and controversial.
Shaw’s most famous works are his plays, including Pygmalion, Man and Superman and Saint Joan. Pygmalion spawned many successful adaptations, including a film version that earned Shaw an Academy Award and the well-known musical My Fair Lady by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Canada’s annual Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake continues to celebrate his legacy by presenting a selection of his plays and those of his contemporaries every year.
The collection of essays Pen Portraits and Reviews, while not as well known as his plays, gives insight into Bernard Shaw the man. These essays cover a wide range of Shaw’s interests and concerns, including his thoughts on the works of Beethoven, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Keats and many others. Throughout the essays, his opinions on current social and political issues, as well as his views on the actions of many of his contemporaries, are evident.
We are very pleased to bring this public-domain work to you. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more public-domain titles to Canada. Information about volunteering with our organization is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
March 1, 2017:
Dashiell Hammett was an American author of detective crime fiction and short stories. As a young man he started his career at the Pinkerton Detective Agency as an operative. Hammett wrote most of his fiction while living in San Francisco in the 1920’s using street locations and characters based on people he knew personally. He is currently known as the dean of the “hard-boiled” school of detective fiction. Although his short writing career included 5 novels, 54 short stories, 18 published collections of short stories and 4 screenplays, his most popular and memorable characters are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse).
In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade is hired by Miss Wonderley to track down her sister who has eloped with a louse, Floyd Thursby. However, Miss Wonderley is in fact the treacherous Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and when Spade’s partner Miles is shot while on Thursby’s trail, Spade finds himself the hunter and the hunted. Can he track down a missing bird before the fat man finds him?
Here at Faded Page you can find, in addition to The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, The Dain Curse and The Adventures of Sam Spade and other Stories, with more Dashiell Hammett titles coming in the future. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more of these public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering with our organization is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 14, 2017:
Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell
February, the month for love and romance, is the perfect time to discover English and Australian novelist Angela Thirkell (1890-1961). Her Barsetshire novels, set in the fictional county of Barsetshire invented by Anthony Trollope, remain popular today and have inspired fans to maintain Angela Thirkell appreciation societies in several countries.
In Wild Strawberries, Mary Preston, a relation of the large Leslie family, spends her summer at their country home and finds herself drawn to two of the sons, each very different in temperament and life experience from the other. At the same time, she gets caught up in the complicated and often hilarious social affairs of the family. While romance plays a large part in this novel, it’s Thirkell’s skill with social satire that makes this such an entertaining story.
Here at Faded Page, we have a number of Angela Thirkell’s titles and are continuing our work to bring more of her books and other public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering with our organization is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
February 1, 2017:
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), American novelist, short story writer, playwright and winner of the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, is best known for his satirical works depicting social issues during the Depression years. His father and grandfather were both physicians and this background gave him the medical knowledge needed to write Arrowsmith. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith in 1925 but refused the award.
In the story, Martin Arrowsmith starts out in medicine at age 14 as an assistant to a drunken physician. He becomes a doctor and his wife urges him to leave the mundane small-town-doctor life in order to pursue his calling as a scientist and researcher. He heads for the West Indies with a serum to halt an epidemic but a tragic turn of events forces him to evaluate his career and personal life.
Find this and other Sinclair Lewis titles Ann Vickers, Dodsworth, Kingsblood Royal, and It Can’t Happen Here (coming soon) here at Faded Page.
Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more of these public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering with our organization is available on our companion site Distributed Proofreaders Canada.
January 15, 2017:
The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence is the story of an upper-class couple’s impending marriage, and the introduction of the bride’s cousin, plagued by scandal, whose presence threatens their happiness. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1921.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was an American writer of 15 novels, 85 short stories, 7 novellas, 3 poetry books and 9 non-fiction books of travel and design. Although she was born and spent most of her early life in New England, she moved to Paris, France to help raise money to assist refugees during WWI. After the war, she remained in France living in Paris and southern France where she wrote The Age of Innocence.
At Faded Page, we have 15 other titles of Edith Wharton including Ethan Frome, In Morocco, and Tales of Men and Ghosts. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more of these public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering is available on our companion site pgdpcanada.net.January 1, 2017:
Let’s welcome the new year with a classic mystery, The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers. Featuring her popular sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, this novel published in 1934 starts on New Year’s Eve, when Wimsey finds himself stranded in the village of Fenchurch St. Paul after a car accident. Wimsey, along with his valet Bunter, gets involved in a murder investigation as well as the fascinating world of bell-ringing, when he offers to help with a nine-hour peal of bells to bring in the new year.
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957) is well known for her crime novels, but she was also a poet, playwright and essayist. Here at Faded Page, you can browse The Works of Dorothy L. Sayers to see the growing collection of works we have made available to readers. If you would like to help us in our mission to provide high-quality e-book versions of Sayers’s works and other public-domain books, you can find information about volunteering with our organization on our companion site pgdpcanada.net.
December 15, 2016: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
With the coming of the Holiday Season, we think of Charles Dickens’s classic, A Christmas Carol. We have the original first-edition manuscript transcript with facsimile pages and illustrations by John Leech. The book was written when the British were examining their past and present Christmas traditions of Christmas cards and caroling. Dickens’s sources for the tale were derived from his childhood experiences in factory work with a father in debtor’s prison, as well as his lifelong sympathy for the poor, children living in poverty, and social justice issues related to child education and work conditions. After a three day visit to Manchester and a school for street children, he had the plot developed.
In the story, a bitter old miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, transforms into a gentler, kinder man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. The story is as popular today as it was when it was first published a few days before Christmas in 1843.
Other illustrated Charles Dickens titles at Faded Page include Bleak House with illustrations by “Phiz”; Dickens’ last unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood; and selections from Christmas Stories.
Please consider helping us in our mission to provide high-quality e-book versions of public domain books. More information about volunteering with our organization is available on our companion site pgdpcanada.net.
December 1, 2016: The Story of The Mikado by W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for 14 comic operas produced with collaborator-composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. Together they produced such notable comic operas as The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore, and in 1885, The Mikado. The Mikado is a story that allowed Gilbert & Sullivan to satirize British politics and institutions using a thinly disguised Japanese setting. It has become one of the most successful productions performed and has been translated into numerous languages and adaptations.
One such adaptation is The Story of The Mikado, Gilbert’s last literary work. It is a retelling of The Mikado, with various changes to simplify the language and make it more suitable for children, and includes color and B&W illustrations by Alice Bolingbroke Woodward (1862-1951). Woodward, a children’s book and magazine illustrator, illustrated The Story of Peter Pan: Retold from the Fairy Play, also available here at Faded Page.
Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more of these public domain titles to Canada. More information about volunteering with our organization is available on our companion site pgdpcanada.net.
November 15, 2016: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
This memoir about Ernest Hemingway’s time in Paris during the 1920’s includes his thoughts on his writing process, living in Paris, French food and drink, skiing, horse racing and many other things. Particularly interesting are his interactions with other writers such as Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This book is a beautifully written, easy read that makes the reader feel as if he or she were in France, and many of the food descriptions are mouth-watering. It wasn’t all pleasant for Hemingway, though. There were sad moments and even tragic ones. However, his love of life shows clearly during this period in which he and his wife were, as he put it, “very poor and very happy.” It’s a stark contrast to the image that is more prevalent, that of the older broken Hemingway who ends up taking his own life.
Here at Faded Page, we have a number of books and short story collections by Ernest Hemingway, including The Sun Also Rises, Men Without Women and The Old Man and the Sea. The last undoubtedly contributed to Hemingway’s being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954.
Please consider helping us in our mission to provide high-quality e-book versions of public domain books. More information about volunteering with our organization is available on our companion site pgdpcanada.net.
November 1, 2016: All Else is Folly: A Tale of War and Passion by Peregrine Palmer Acland (1891-1963)
As Remembrance Day, Veteran's Day and Armistice Day approach on November 11, thoughts turn to Peregrine Palmer Acland, a Canadian author and soldier who served with the 48th Highlanders, earned the Military Cross and was subsequently critically injured in the Battle of the Somme. His bestselling novel, All Else is Folly, subtitled "A Tale of War and Passion", depicts the Canadian experience during the First World War and portrays the terrors and hardships of trench warfare. Critics and commentators viewed it as a meditation on the nature of man and the idea of man as lover. This book was long out of print and we are happy to offer it to our readers here at fadedpage.com.
Other related fiction and non-fiction titles for this Remembrance Day currently available at Faded Page include: the Parade's End series by Ford Maddox Ford; The Dark Forest by Hugh Walpole; In Flanders Fields And Other Poems by Lt.-Col. John McCrae; Carry On--Letters in War-Time by Coningsby William Dawson; WAAC: The Woman's Story of the War by Anonymous; A Sub and a Submarine-The Story of H.M. Submarine R19 in the Great War by Percy Westerman; The Silent Watchers by Frederick Harcourt Kitchin; and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
Future titles coming to Faded Page include Phillip Gibbs's Across the Frontier, the transcripts of the Nuremburg trials, and Winston Churchill's multi-volume memoirs beginning with The Second World War, Volume I: The Gathering Storm.
Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more of these public domain titles to Canada.
October 15, 2016: Spook Stories by E. F. Benson
“Premonition” by Henryk Weyssenhoff, 1893
The perfect reading as we approach All Hallows' Eve is a volume of scary tales of the supernatural. In E. F. Benson's collection, Spook Stories, we encounter ghosts benevolent and evil, many of which reside in old haunted English houses in sleepy towns. For example, "Home Sweet Home" features a mysterious room in which an invisible pianist plays, "Spinach" recounts the strange events that befall two psychic mediums on holiday, while "The Face" describes a nightmare that turns into reality.
Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was a prolific writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction work. Television adaptations have been made from his popular Mapp and Lucia books, the most recent in 2014. A number of Benson's works are available here at Faded Page and we are currently working at bringing more to you. We welcome volunteers to help us with this effort. More information can be found here.
October 1, 2016: Happy Stories, Just to Laugh At by Stephen Butler Leacock
“All chess players think of opening on the Queen's side but never do. Life ends too soon.”
—S. Leacock, “Pawn to King's Four”
Stephen Butler Leacock (1869-1944), Canada's most famous humourist as well as a highly respected economist and educator, was a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction. He travelled around the globe delivering speeches, usually on economic subjects in a witty and satirical style. With a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Chicago, he lectured and chaired the economics department at McGill University until his retirement in 1936.
Happy Stories, Just to Laugh at is a collection of 24 short stories that was one of Stephen Leacock's last publications. Happy Stories, along with two other titles, My Remarkable Uncle and Wit & Humour, were also part of the specially published book collection of Armed Services Editions (ASEs) for troops and POWs during WWII. These light, paperback editions, the size of a serviceman's pocket, provided relief to many servicemen and POWs.
Happy Stories, Just to Laugh at is available at Faded Page here along with 35 other Leacock titles of humor and nonfiction including Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, The Boy I Left Behind Me, The Hohenzollerns in America, and 1937 Governor General's Award winner My Discovery of the West. We have many more Leacock titles under development at the current time, come join us and proof a few pages and help us bring more Stephen Leacock public domain titles to Canada.
September 15, 2016: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) is a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. Born in Paris, he trained and qualified as a physician. While serving with the Red Cross in World War I, he was recruited into the British Secret Service in 1916. His medical knowledge and travel experiences after the war around the world influenced his later short stories and novels including The Painted Veil, written in 1935.
The title “The Painted Veil” is taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet which begins, “Lift not the painted veil which those who live call Life.” Set in England and China during the 1920’s, the story is told through Kitty Fane. When her husband, a bacteriologist, discovers her infidelity, he forces her to accompany him into a cholera epidemic in the interior of China. Stripped of all friends and society contact, Kitty is forced to reassess her life.
Find this and other W. Somerset Maugham titles here at Faded Page.
September 1, 2016: The Abbey Girls Go Back to School by Elsie J. Oxenham (Elsie Jeannette Dunkerley)
For many students in the northern hemisphere, the arrival of September coincides with the beginning of the new school year. The Abbey Girls Go Back to School by Elsie J. Oxenham (the pseudonym of Elsie Jeannette Dunkerley) is one of the 38-book Abbey series that tells the stories of students at a girls' school. The abbey that is featured in the books was inspired by Cleeve Abbey, a medieval monastery located in Somerset, England.
Dunkerley was born in 1880 in Southport, Lancashire but grew up and spent much of her life in Ealing, West London. She later moved to Worthing, where she died in 1960, after having had almost 90 titles published. One of Dunkerley's great interests was English folk dancing, which she herself taught. Many of these dances are described in detail in her books and they play an especially large role in The Abbey Girls Go Back to School.
The Abbey series is very popular among collectors and there exist several appreciation societies around the world. You are invited to browse our collection of Dunkerley's works, including a number of the Abbey Girls books, available here at Faded Page.
August 15, 2016: Ask Miss Mott by E. Phillips Oppenheim
E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866-1946) was a novelist who wrote 39 volumes of short stories and 116 novels mainly of suspense and international intrigue. He is generally regarded as the earliest writer of spy fiction as we know it today, and, invented the “Rogue Male” school of adventure thrillers that was later exploited by other authors like John Buchan.
In Ask Miss Mott, a collection of 10 short stories representing 10 cases, Lucie Mott solves two cases, helps rescue her uncle in a third case, and in five cases is saved from her own folly by a supposed criminal, Violet Joe, with whom she immediately falls in love. The final case ties them all together.
Ask Miss Mott is available at Faded Page HERE along with 56 other Oppenheim titles of suspense and short stories including The Spymaster, Murder at Monte Carlo, Last Train Out, and Mysterious Mr. Sabin. Future titles coming to Faded Page include The Stranger's Gate, Up the Ladder of Gold, and Matorni's Vineyard. Come join us and proof a few pages and help us bring more Phillips Oppenheim public domain titles to Canada.
August 2, 2016: Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908-1964) was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer in World War II where his wartime service and journalist career provided much of the the background detail of the James Bond novels. During the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and succumbed to heart disease in 1964 at the age of 56. Two Bond books were published posthumously.
In Goldfinger (Bond #7), Auric Goldfinger, the most phenomenal criminal Bond has ever faced, is an evil genius who likes his cash in gold bars and his women dressed only in gold paint. After smuggling tons of gold out of Britain into secret vaults in Switzerland, this powerful villain is planning the biggest and most daring heist in history-robbing all the gold in Fort Knox. That is, unless Secret Agent 007 can foil his plan. In one of Ian Fleming's most popular adventures, James Bond tracks this most dangerous foe across two continents and takes on two of the most memorable villains ever created-a human weapon named Oddjob and a luscious female crime boss named Pussy Galore.
In addition to James Bond titles such as Moonraker, From Russia With Love, and Live and Let Die, Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two non-fiction works including The Diamond Smugglers, all available now at Faded Page here. Future titles coming to Faded Page include James Bond titles Dr. No, For Your Eyes Only, and Diamonds Are Forever. Come join us and proof a few pages to help us bring more James Bond public domain titles to Canada.
July 15, 2016: Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Normal Hall
Charles Bernard Nordhoff and James Norman Hall began in 1929 their work on an historical novel dealing with the mutiny on board H.M.S. Bounty. Upon the advice of their publishers, English assistants researched the archives of the British Museum, rare-book shops, collections of prints and engravings in London, Bligh’s correspondence and the Admiralty records of the court-martial proceedings. Copies of the Bounty’s deck and rigging plans were also secured, with special reference to the alterations made for her breadfruit tree voyage. All this was forwarded to the home of Nordhoff and Hall in Tahiti.
The Bounty history divides itself naturally into three parts, and it was the plan of the authors, from the beginning, to deal with each of these in a separate volume. Mutiny on the Bounty, which opens the story, is concerned with the voyage of the vessel from England, the long Tahiti sojourn while the cargo of young breadfruit trees was being assembled, the departure of the homeward-bound ship, the mutiny, and the fate of those of her company who later returned to Tahiti, where they were eventually seized by H.M.S. Pandora and taken back to England for trial. The authors chose as the narrator of this story a fictitious character, Roger Byam, who tells it as an old man, after his retirement from the Navy. Byam had his actual counterpart in the person of Midshipman Peter Heywood on H.M.S. Bounty.
The second book of the trilogy, Men Against the Sea, the story of Captain Bligh and his fellow castaways, is also available here at Faded Page, and Pitcairn's Island, the story of Fletcher Christian and the mutineers, will be coming soon. If you would like to help make more titles available to the public, come join us in proofing additional titles such as The Hurricane and Lost Island, also from Nordhoff and Hall currently in the proofing rounds.
July 1, 2016: Roughing it in the Bush by Susanna Moodie
On Canada Day, it is fitting to showcase the work of one of Canada's earliest writers, Susanna Moodie. Born in England, Moodie immigrated to Upper Canada in 1832 and wrote Roughing it in the Bush as a guide for other British people moving to Canada. With its realistic portrayal of the hardships of a settler's life, this book is considered an important and historic part of Canadian literature. Moodie has inspired the work of celebrated writers Carol Shields and Margaret Atwood, including the latter's collection of poetry, The Journals of Susanna Moodie.
Moodie came from a family of notable writers. Our collection here at Faded Page also includes work from her sisters, Catherine Parr Trail, Agnes Strickland and Jane Margaret Strickland.
June 15, 2016: The New Galt Cookbook
Blanc-Mange Strawberries, Curried Calf's Brain, Gruel, Sago Jelly, Disinfectant, Cure for Lumbago or Caustic Soap. This cookbook has whatever you could possibly want around the house. Anything a domestic person might require is here, from How to Purify Cistern Water, to Boot Polish; Apple Fritters to Boiled Beefsteak Pudding. Oysters appear to have been popular at this time, with more than a dozen recipes for them alone! There are not just obscurities, but many recipes which you might want today, from Salad to Lemon Pie; from Devilled Eggs to multiple recipes for Tomato Catsup.
Written at the turn of the 20th century, this is a truly comprehensive cookbook put together in the town of Galt, now amalgamated into Cambridge, Ontario. Each recipe names its contributor, and their home town: Preston, Woodstock, St. George, Fergus, Stratford... This book was the subject of a blog found at Cooking with the Galt Cook Book, where Carolyn Blackstock for a year cooked every day from this book!
June 1, 2016: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203-206
Aldous Leonard Huxley, (July 26, 1894—November 22, 1963) was an English writer, novelist, philosopher, Hollywood screenwriter, and Oxford graduate in English Literature. He is best known for Brave New World and his social satires, essays, and non-fiction.
Set in London in the year A.D. 2540, Brave New World is a novel of ideas which takes place in a dystopian state where the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers. Written in 1932, Huxley’s fantasy of the future anticipates the developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning.
Find this and other Huxley titles such as Limbo, The Devils of Loudun, Those Barren Leaves, as well as other non-fiction titles here at Faded Page.
May 15, 2016: The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis (29 November 1898 - 22 November 1963) was a British novelist, poet, academic, lay theologian, literary critic, broadcaster, and medievalist. Lewis held academic positions at Oxford University and Cambridge University and is best known for his fictional work: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, and The Screwtape Letters.
The Screwtape Letters takes the form of a series of letters. Screwtape, a senior demon, holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy (“Lowerarchy”) of Hell and acts as a mentor to his nephew Wormwood, the inexperienced tempter. In the body of the thirty-one letters, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin to a British man, “the Patient”, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine. Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiar morally reversed world, where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither demon is capable of comprehending or acknowledging true human virtue when he sees it.
Find this and more than 30 other C.S. Lewis titles including volumes from The Chronicles of Narnia series and The Space Trilogy, as well as Christian essays such as “The Pilgrim’s Regress” and “The Problem of Pain”, here at Faded Page.
May 1, 2016: “May-Day”, from Our Young Folks. An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls. Vol 2, Issue 5: May 1866
Rowan Oak, Home of William Faulkner
Our Young Folks contains much that would appeal to children and adults alike, including stories presented in serial form, poetry, challenging puzzles, and beautiful engravings like the one shown here. The May 1866 issue contains an article of particular interest on this date. “May-Day” describes the origins of the festival and the ways in which the English celebrated this event in earlier days, including the custom of raising the May-pole. The article also features the lyrics of songs that would have been heard during these celebrations.
“May, sweet May, again is come,
May, that frees the land from gloom;
Children, children, up and see
All her stores of jollity!”
April 15, 2016: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Rowan Oak, Home of William Faulkner
William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury follows the lives of various members of the Compson family in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County of Mississippi. Published in 1929, this novel is presented in four parts, with different narrators for each. The Sound and the Fury is a challenging book to read, with its stream-of-consciousness style, unorthodox use of punctuation and nonlinear structure featuring sudden shifts in time. Yet, it is worth the effort, as it is considered by many to be one of the finest works of American literature. It was ranked 6th on the 1998 Modern Library’s list of the 100 best English-language novels of all time and was a significant part of the body of work that led to Faulkner’s winning the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Many of Faulkner’s other novels and short stories also take place in Yoknapatawpha County and are among the most well-known examples of the Southern Gothic genre.
April 1, 2016:
The Forger by Edgar Wallace
Edgar (Richard Horatio) Wallace, an English writer born into poverty in Greenwich, bought his way out of the army after joining at age 21 and, instead, became a war correspondent for Reuters and the Daily Mail during the Second Boer War. He left South Africa with a mountain of horse-racing debt and began writing thrillers to raise income. Over his lifetime he wrote 957 short stories, 18 plays, and over 170 novels and screenplays. He was hired on as a “script doctor” at RKO Studios in Hollywood, California and wrote the initial 110 page draft script for the producer’s ‘gorilla picture’ called “The Beast”. This movie script later became known as “King Kong”. He died of undiagnosed diabetes before the final movie script reached the screen.
His most popular writing genre, crime novels, include The Forger, published in 1927. In this story, forged notes have started to appear everywhere. Mr. Cheyne Wells of Harley Street has been given one. So has Porter. Peter Clifton is rich, but no one is quite certain how he acquired his money--not even his wife, the beautiful Jane Leith. One night someone puts a ladder to Jane’s window and enters her room. It is not her jewels they are after. Inspector Rouper and Superintendent Bourke are both involved in trying to solve this thrilling mystery.
More than nineteen other Edgar Wallace titles are available here at Faded Page.
March 17, 2016:
Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland by T. Crofton Croker
Why not celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by indulging your senses in the wonderful selection of short tales in Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland? Here is a sample of some of the treats awaiting you!
In “The Brewery of Egg-Shells”, a mother wonders if the child in its cradle is her own baby or a changeling (a bad fairy). A helpful neighbour suggests dunking the baby in a bath of boiling water and a dozen broken egg-shells to find out if it is her own boy or a fairy. Will she take the advice? (Don’t try this at home!)
“The Banshee” is a rather spooky tale of a forewarning of impending death. Mr. Bunworth was not dangerously ill but a man bringing him medicine was convinced that the Banshee was on the prowl. No-one would believe him. Would you? Read this to find out the truth but beware of a wailing woman with long white hair!
The last tale in the book, “The Giant’s Stairs”, tells the strange story of young Philip Ronayne who escaped the giant Mahon Mac Mahon. How did he outwit him and who helped him?
March 1, 2016: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is an environmental science book documenting the detrimental effects of pesticide aerial spraying on the environment and the long-term effects on animal and human health. Its publication led to a U.S. ban on DDT and inspired an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Rachel Carson began as a marine biologist at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries writing copy for radio educational programs. She became a full-time writer after her 1951 best seller The Sea Around Us won her a National Book Award. During the 1940's she became concerned with the use of synthetic pesticides that had been developed initially through military funding programs and used in Europe at the end of the war. In 1957 the Department of Agriculture, as part of its Fire Ant Eradication program, began aerial spraying of DDT mixed with fuel oil over private land, despite public objection. This spurred Carson to research, investigation and the publication of Silent Spring in 1962, two years before she died of cancer.
Carson's main argument is that pesticides have detrimental effects on the environment and are more properly termed “biocides” because their effects are rarely limited to the target pest. She also accuses the chemical industry of intentionally spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting industry claims uncritically. The title, originally planned for the chapter on birds, was inspired by John Keats “La Belle Dame sans Merci” which contains the lines
“The sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.”
February 15, 2016:
L’Étranger d’Albert Camus
Albert Camus, journaliste, philosophe et écrivain lauréat du prix Nobel de littérature, publie L’Étranger en 1942. Il y décrit les fondements de sa philosophie: l’absurde.
L’Étranger est l’histoire d’un homme franco-algérien indifférent qui, après avoir assisté à l’enterrement de sa mère, tue dans un état apathique un Arabe qu’il connaît. Ce roman en deux parties, écrit à la première personne, restitue le paysage mental de l’assassin avant et après le meurtre.
Camus s’explique plus tard: « J’ai résumé L’Étranger, il y a longtemps, par une phrase dont je reconnais qu’elle est très paradoxale: “Dans notre société, tout homme qui ne pleure pas à l’enterrement de sa mère risque d’être condamné à mort.” Je voulais dire seulement que le héros du livre est condamné parce qu’il ne joue pas le jeu. »
Albert Camus, journalist, philosopher, and Nobel Prize winning author, wrote L’Étranger in 1942 as a representation of his philosophy known as “absurdism.”
The Stranger is the story of an indifferent French Algerian man who, after attending his mother’s funeral, apathetically kills an Arab man whom he knows. The two-part story is his first-person narrative view before and after the murder.
Camus later wrote: “I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: ‘In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.’ I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game.”
February 1, 2016:
Mary Wakefield by Mazo de la Roche
Mazo de la Roche (pronounced may'zo and Rosh to rhyme with Foch), was born on January 15, 1879 in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada and is best known for her Jalna Series, otherwise known as the Whiteoak Chronicles. The series tells the story of one hundred years of the Whiteoak family covering from 1854 to 1954. Although the novels were not written in sequential order, each can be read as an independent story. Names of many of the characters were taken from gravestones in a Newmarket, Ontario cemetery and the author reportedly once told a friend that she “had the whole story in her head from beginning to end; all she had to do was write it down.” Mazo de la Roche died July 12, 1961 and is buried near Stephen Leacock, another Canadian author available here at Fadedpage, in Sutton, Ontario. The Jalna series has sold over eleven million copies worldwide in 193 English and 92 foreign editions.
In Mary Wakefield, published in 1949 and the third book of the Jalna series, a young English woman is hired by Ernest Whiteoak to be a governess to Phillip’s motherless children. When Phillip falls in love with her, his mother does all she can to prevent the marriage.
Fadedpage also has other Jalna series books: Jalna, Young Renny, Master of Jalna, and Finch’s Fortune.
January 15, 2016:
In Flanders Fields and Other Poems by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae
The poem “In Flanders Fields” was written by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae while he was waiting for the wounded to arrive at his dugout in Flanders, Belgium. It was inspired particularly by the death of a friend on May 2, 1915. Published in the London magazine Punch in December 1915, it rapidly became the most popular English-language poem of the war. The poem has made the poppy the enduring symbol of the war dead of the British empire; it is a lasting symbol of self-sacrifice in war.
On January 28, 1918, McCrae died of pneumonia and meningitis; he was 45 years old. He was buried with full military honours in the cemetery at Wimereux, France.
This book contains most of the poems that he wrote and submitted to various publications over the years of his medical career. There is also a biographical essay by Sir Andrew Macphail.
The Dictionary of Canadian Biography website contains more information on John McCrae. There is also a commemorative vignette that was created by Historica Canada for their Heritage Minutes Collection. There are several museums in Canada that commemorate John McCrae's life. In 1946, John McCrae was declared a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada.
January 1, 2016:
Cakes and Ale by Edward Spencer
Are you feeling jaded after the excesses of Christmas and New Year, or perhaps you are still in a celebratory mood? This book might just revitalise your taste buds and spirits (of both kinds)!
There are some short histories of the meals of the day, such as breakfast, “luncheon” and dinner as well as information about the drinks and where they might have come from. There are plenty of recipes for you to try your shaky hands at!
How about a breakfast from India: parrot pie, cold buffalo hump, and grilled sheep's tail? That should set you up for the day! On the other hand, you might fancy luncheon in London and try out Ye Pudding stuffed with steak, kidney, oysters, mushrooms, and larks, or perhaps curried locusts are more to your taste. Grilled bones might be a tempting treat for supper.
Feeling thirsty? How about a Glasgow Punch, a Bosom Caresser or a Crimean Cup? I wonder which one you would enjoy most!
Be a bit reckless and download this book. It is sure to make you laugh!
December 16, 2015:
An English Murder by Cyril Hare
In this classic Golden Age mystery, family and friends gather at a country manor for Christmas celebrations. The mood turns from joyful to chilling as the first murder occurs, and the guests are cut off from the outside world by a fierce snowstorm. This novel is a wonderful example of the traditional country-house mystery and the perfect book to read in snowy December. The author, Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, better known as Cyril Hare, is the author of the Francis Pettigrew mystery stories, featuring a barrister as amateur sleuth. All of these, as well as other works by Hare, are available here at Faded Page.
December 1, 2015:
Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Many know the story of Anne of Green Gables, the warm, precocious and spirited orphan girl adopted by the Cuthberts. Anne is known and loved by readers from all around the world and many of her fans have visited the attractions inspired by her story on Prince Edward Island.
But what happens to Anne after she settles in Green Gables? Her story continues in Anne of Avonlea, published in 1909, which describes Anne's experiences as a schoolteacher from age 16 and 18. There are 8 Anne books in all, and these can be found, along with many other works, in our Lucy Maud Montgomery special collection.
November 15, 2015:
Autobiography of Matthew Scott, Jumbo's Keeper, including Jumbo's Biography
Autobiography of Matthew Scott, Jumbo's Keeper plus Jumbo's Biography, are found together in one volume. We are so used to the adjective jumbo that we forget that the term comes from Jumbo, a very famous large elephant. The first part of the book tells of the “peculiar and checkered” life of his keeper, Matthew Scott, who was born, one of seventeen children, in England in 1834. After having worked in the menagerie on the estate of Lord Derby, he eventually became a keeper at London Zoo. Later, he travelled to France, to bring Jumbo, the elephant, to London.
In the Biography of Jumbo we learn all about Jumbo's arrival in London and his life as a celebrity there. Due to his fame, Jumbo along with Matthew travelled by sea to America where he was exhibited by Barnum. The book gives a real insight into Jumbo's varied life.
November 1, 2015:
Shadowed Victory by Arthur Stringer 
We present Arthur Stringer's Shadowed Victory as we observe Remembrance Day in Canada and many other countries on November 11. In some countries, Armistice Day is observed, while in the United States, November 11 marks Veterans Day.
Arthur John Stringer, novelist, screenwriter and poet, was born in 1874 in Cedar Springs, Ontario. He is best known as a writer of crime fiction, wilderness adventures, numerous film scripts, and several books of poetry. His best known blank-verse drama is Sappho in Leucadia. In 1914, he attained fame as the first Canadian poet to use free verse with his Open Water book of verse. Seven years before he died in 1950, he published Shadowed Victory, a blank-verse poem about Canada during World War I.
In the poem, Stringer paints the story of Hugh, the young man who rushes to join and go to war, and his friend Clyde, the young man who stays behind to work the farm on the prairie to feed the troops. Each fights the enemy presented to them; one 'fighting the Hun' and the other fighting the drought and frost and the loss of his girl, Lynn, to the soldier. The war ends, but for Hugh, Clyde and Lynn, it is a shadowed victory.
October 16, 2015:
Stories of H. P. Lovecraft
As we approach All Hallow's Eve, what better works to read than those of H. P. Lovecraft? Though he remained virtually unknown during his lifetime and died in poverty, he has influenced many of today's most popular horror authors and has inspired the often used “Lovecraftian” adjective. Outside of literature, his influence can be seen in films, board games, video games and music.
Our collection includes short stories "Cool Air" and The Nameless City, which is considered the first of his well-known Cthulhu Mythos stories. The image above is Lovecraft's own sketch of the cosmic entity Cthulhu.
October 1, 2015:
The Canadian Horticulturist
The Canadian Horticulturist is a periodical from the late 1800's and early 1900's that contains articles on all kinds of gardening and crops in Canada. Surprisingly, much of the information and advice given in the magazine is still relevant today. One of our readers found articles on the care of amaryllis and clematis particularly helpful. If you're a fruit farmer, you would benefit from reading this magazine. If you're a greenhouse owner, you will find tips here. If you want to grow potatoes or house plants, you will get plenty of useful information in the pages of this magazine. With the resurgence of interest in heirloom gardening, this century-old periodical is perfect for the current times!
September 15, 2015:
The Story of a Hare by J. C. Tregarthen
This story by British naturalist John Coulson Tregarthen never fails to fascinate in its telling of the amazing life of a hare from its birth, its learning curve as a young leveret to its becoming an adult hare. It is told in an unsentimental way and features the animals and landscape of Cornwall in England. The book provides a vivid picture of a young animal coping with and overcoming the stresses of life around it. A number of photographs enhance this edition.
September 1, 2015:
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
This story is about two bodies: one, an unknown man found wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez in a local architect’s bath tub, the other a well-known wealthy financier who is missing and who is definitely not the unknown man in the bath tub. Through various twists and turns—typical of all the Wimsey mystery stories—a surgeon at a local teaching hospital becomes the chief suspect.
You’ll have to read to story to discover the reasons ... I don’t want to spoil it for you ... but, be assured that, if you enjoy mysteries involving aristocratic amateur sleuths, you’ll having difficulty putting down the book until it’s finished ... then you’ll want to read the others.
Dorothy L. Sayers 1893-1957 is a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright essayist, translator, Christian humanist, and more. She was a fairly prolific author and Faded Page has quite a few of her books with plans to add more; see Special Collection: The Works of Dorothy Leigh Sayers.
Lord Peter is a dilettante who solves mysteries—quite often murders—for his own amusement; he is an archetype for the British gentleman detective with a touch of mild satire for the British class system. Though he enjoys the “thrill of the chase”, he has ambiguous feelings about catching criminals for a hobby—especially if they could be hanged. Lord Peter occasionally suffers from “nervous” problems caused by wartime shell-shock—what we would now probably call PTSD—then it was termed “malingering”. He has an interest in rare books and collecting incunabula—which is usually used to refer to “the earliest stages or first traces in the development of anything”. He considers himself an expert on food, wine, male fashion and classical music.
Whose Body?—which introduces many of the regular characters—is followed by ten other novels, interspersed with over 20 short stories, and followed by, at least, four books by Jill Paton Walsh—approved by the Sayers’ estate—with the first one being the completion of an unpublished manuscript. The stories begin in the 1920’s and follow Lord Peter through his life, and marriage, for the next 20 years; the books by Walsh take us further. Naturally, those books written by Walsh will not be in the public domain for many years yet, as she is still living, but you can probably find them at your local library.
August 15, 2015:
Winnie the Pooh (1926) by A.A. Milne (1882-1956)
Everyone—well, almost everyone—knows the story of “Winnie-the-Pooh” and his friends; if not the original stories by A.A. Milne, at least the Disney version. So I will relate how Winnie was “born”.
In August 1914, a Canadian veterinarian and soldier with the Royal Canadian Army Veterinary Corps purchased as a female cub in White River, Ontario, Canada. Lt. Colebourn smuggled the bear cub into Britain as an unofficial regimental mascot. She was named for Lt. Colebourn's home city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
When the regiment was ordered to France, Winnipeg (aka Winnie), was left at the London Zoo for the duration of the war. After the war was over, Colebourn decided to leave her at the London Zoo where she was much loved for her playfulness and gentleness. She lived at the zoo until her death in 1934.
One of Winnipeg's ardent fans was A.A. Milne's son Christopher Robin who regularly enticed his father into visiting the zoo. Christopher Robin changed the name of his own teddy bear from “Edward Bear” to “Winnie the Pooh” and so provided the inspiration for his father's stories about Winnie-the-Pooh and friends.
Historica Canada created the following heart-warming vignette about Winnie.
Please note that we were not able to include any of the original illustrations done by E.H. Shepard as they will not be in the Public Domain in Canada until 2027.
August 1, 2015:
Forlorn River by Zane Grey
Ben Ide spends his time chasing wild horses in Northern California, accompanied by the wanderer, Nevada and his Indian companion, Modoc. Rather than catching horses, rumours circulate that he is a cattle rustler. But Ina Blaine, his childhood sweetheart, doesn't believe the rumours. She defends Ben against the suspicions of her newly-rich father and his unscrupulous associate, Les Setter, who has a previous connection to Nevada.
Looking toward the future, Ben Ide and his companions buy out a couple of ranchers in a severe drought and proceed to catch a lot of wild horses. He is after one in particular- California Red, whom Ina's father has promised as a present for her, if any man should catch him. Setter and Blaine set out to steal Ben's new land while he's off, and trouble follows.
Zane Grey writes from personal knowledge of northern California where he identifies Mt. Shasta, Tule Lake, and the landscape in and around Lava Beds National Monument. The "Forlorn River" represents the Lost River that flows through the Tule Lake area.
Although "Forlorn River" was first published in 1927, it was adapted to two motion pictures, one in 1926 starring Jack Holt and another in 1937 starring Buster Crabbe. It was also made a feature Dell comic in 1952. "Nevada", the sequel to "Forlorn River" is also available for download here at fadedpage.com. For more Zane Grey titles, see our Special Collection page.
July 19, 2015:
American Scenery; or, Land, Lake and River Illustrations of Transatlantic Nature, Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Nathaniel Parker Willis, Esq.; from drawings by W. H. Bartlett.
To celebrate Independence Day in the United States on July 4, we feature "American Scenery Volume I & II" by Nathaniel Parker Willis with illustrations by William Henry Bartlett.
Bartlett, a Londoner, became one of the foremost illustrators of topography of his generation. In 1835, he first visited the United States in order to draw the buildings, towns and scenery of the northeastern states. The 118 finely detailed steel engravings Bartlett produced were published in 1840 uncolored and with a text by Nathaniel Parker Willis as "American Scenery; or Land, Lake, and River: Illustrations of Transatlantic Nature". Willis writes a travel dialogue for each engraving by addressing the reader as a prospective tourist visiting the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara, Yale College or Harper's Ferry. His use of historical vignettes and poems to express his views and add color to his writing may explain how he became the leading magazine writer of his time.
American Scenery was originally published in London in 30 monthly installments from 1837 to 1839 and later as bound editions beginning in 1840. Bartlett's impressions of Canada were collected in 1842 and he collaborated with Willis again using the same format. The result of their collaboration was published as "Canadian Scenery Volume I & II" and is also available here at fadedpage.com.
June 30, 2015:
Early History of the C.P.R. Road by Walter Moberly
A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway by Harold Adams Innis
To celebrate Canada Day on July 1, we feature two works that tell the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada's first transcontinental railway. The C.P.R. was originally built between 1881 and 1885, with the goal of uniting the Eastern and Western parts of the country.
Walter Moberly was a civil engineer and surveyor who played a vital role in the development of British Columbia. He discovered Eagle Pass, through which the C.P.R eventually travelled. His 1909 monograph, Early History of the C.P.R., includes his reflections on the building of the railway.
Innis College at the University of Toronto is named for Harold Adams Innis, who was a professor of political economy there. A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway, published in 1923, was actually his Ph.D. thesis. It is a detailed and comprehensive volume that attempts, in the author's own words, "to trace the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway from an evolutionary and scientific point of view."
June 17, 2015:
Peinture de Clarence Gagnon.
Painting by Clarence Gagnon.
Trente Arpents by Ringuet
Afin de souligner la Saint-Jean-Baptiste, fête nationale du Québec le 24 juin, nous présentons un roman de 1938, écrit par Philippe Panneton dit Ringuet. Un des derniers romans du terroir (anti-roman du terroir pour certains), Trente Arpents dépeint l'essor et le déclin d'Euchariste Moisan, fermier québécois des Laurentides exilé aux États-Unis à la fin de sa vie. Le roman gagne des prix en France et au Québec et la traduction de Felix et Dorothea Walter, Thirty Acres, remporte le prix du Gouverneur général du Canada en 1940. À l'instar de Maria Chapdelaine et du Survenant, le roman est un classique de la littérature canadienne. Depuis 1997, le prix Ringuet est décerné chaque année à un auteur pour un roman, récit ou recueil de nouvelles qui est jugé de très grande qualité par l'Académie des lettres du Québec.
To celebrate St.-Jean-Baptiste Day or fête nationale in the Canadian province of Québec on June 24, we feature this 1938 book by French-Canadian writer Philippe Panneton, better known as Ringuet. This novel, one of the last examples of the roman du terroir (or an anti-roman du terroir for some), depicts the rise and fall of Quebec farmer Euchariste Moisan, born in the Laurentians but exiled to the United States at the end of his life. This novel won prizes in both France and Québec, and the English translation by Felix and Dorothea Walker, Thirty Acres, won the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1940. Like Maria Chapdelaine and Le Survenant, this novel is considered a classic of Canadian literature. Since 1997, the Prix Ringuet has been awarded each year by the Académie des lettres du Québec for an outstanding work of fiction.
May 22, 2015:
Tom Swift and His Flying Boat by Victor Appleton
The Tom Swift series of novels make up what may be the most famous books concerning scientific inventors and inventions in all juvenile literature. Many of the inventions talked about, dreamed about, and built in the books are a reality today.
In this novel, Tom wants to improve seaplane technology and builds a new and large luxurious flying boat from scratch and in record time. In fact, it is done just in time to mount a rescue mission to the Arctic to save Mr. Damon and Mr. Nestor, who have been stranded on an iceberg after their schooner was wrecked. Agents of the USSR and foul weather are just a few of the obstacles hampering Tom's rescue efforts. Does Tom make it in time?
If you want to read more about Tom, Ned Newton, Mary Nestor, Mr. Damon and Patagonian giant Koku, then be sure to come back to the Faded Page site, as we will be adding more Tom Swift adventures in the coming months!
May 8, 2015:
The Beckoning Hand: Olga Davidoff's Husband by Grant Allen
"Olga Davidoff’s Husband" is one of thirteen short stories of suspense in The Beckoning Hand series, each one full of twists and turns. This one starts off in Tobolsk, Siberia in 1873. Olga David is the twenty-year-old heiress of the family Davidoff who originally came from Wales but through the generations changed their name from David to Davidoff.
Olga, the belle of the city, meets the dashing, handsome Baron Niaz, a Russian with Tartar blood, and from then on her life takes a dramatic turn. The persuasive Baron proposes and after their marriage they set off for Siberia to his isolated stronghold up in the mountains. All goes well for many weeks and then things change. Olga cannot understand why her husband keeps disappearing for several days before returning. Where does his mysterious new watch with strange initials come from? Why does he stamp on it in the courtyard and destroy it?
April 26, 2015:
Arctic Searching Expedition - A Journal of a Boat-Voyage, Vol. 1 (1851)
and
Arctic Searching Expedition - A Journal of a Boat-Voyage, Vol. 2 (1851)
by Sir John Richardson (1787-1865)
DPC recently completed, and have posted, their 2,000th and 2,001st projects.
This two volume set is a report of a voyage through Rupert's Land (central to northern interior of Canada) and the Arctic Sea, in search of the lost ships under the command of Sir John Franklin. This was the first voyage in search of Franklin and his ships.
These volumes include discussions of the journey and searching undertaken, along with the geography, people, plants, etc. found on the voyage. An extensive Appendix includes details on the geography, geology, climatology, distribution of plants and insect species, and vocabulary lists for a number of the aboriginal groups they met. There are also coloured illustrations and drawings of natives and locations visited.
In September 2014, a Parks Canada expedition discovered the remains of one of Franklin's ships. It was eventually determined that the ship found was the HMS Erebus. For those interested, here is the link to the Parks Canada website for The Franklin Expedition.
Circa 2014:
The Adventures of the Chevalier de la Salle
by John S. C. Abbott (1875)
This fascinating history of exploration, discovery and settlement along the great Missouri/Mississippi valley—the heart of the North American continent—features adventure, research, colonization and religious conversion amongst the native peoples and early settlers.
de la Salle was one of the explorers who opened up the continent, travelling by canoe and on foot. Over a period exceeding 30 years he and his colleagues met people, proselytized for the Catholic faith, recorded geographic and biologic discoveries, and establsihed trading posts and forts. In the long run, their last voyage proved fatal, when they attempted to settle near the mouth of the Mississippi.
And the book itself represents a bit of an exploration, too, as we set out on a program to "recapture" the early eBooks produced by DPC. They were posted to Project Gutenberg Canada. Now we propose to add them all to the FP catalogue. The program will take a lot of effort, as there are several hundred such eBooks. Once we have identified which eBooks need to be transferred to FP, their header files will need to be modified, the projects will have to be loaded to the FP database via FTP software, and an entry made in the FP catalogue.
Not much time for a single eBook, but multiplied by hundreds of entries, quite a task!! The resulting expansion in the FP catalogue of hundreds of additional titles will be well worth the effort.
Enjoy de la Salle!