The Annotated The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes/Introduction

by John Oliver Hobbes

Rationale

The annotated The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes has been developed out of an academic curiosity of the potential of moving traditional textual scholarship toward the creation of social editions. That is, to allow a community of students, scholars and non-scholars the opportunity to work together on a text. Following the intentions of both academia and Wikimedia projects, the goal is to provide universal access to cultural works. For Wikimedia, this generally means to make the text available to be viewed on a computer and free of copyright. However, from a literary perspective, technical access alone is a limiting practice. A literary work needs to be historically and culturally accessible as well, which requires differing forms of contextualization and interpretation. In this regard, the annotated social edition seeks to add further layers of access for both readers and editors alike.

With this in mind, The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes (1894) was chosen as the text to be studied due to the relative lack of literary recognition that she has received, despite a rather successful career as a novelist [Citation needed]. The goal then is to bring her work back into contemporary view and honour her work and to provide further understanding of the time she lived in.

History

The following history has been included for the stake of transparency. This edition can be traced back to a single copy of The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes located at the library of The University of California in Los Angeles. Aided with funding from the Microsoft Corporation, scanner-james-san used a Canon 5D camera to digitize a single copy of a book that was recorded to have 451 pages, 1 leaf of plates, and was 22cm. Following this process the digital surrogate was uploaded to The Internet Archive on May 28 2008 where it is located at archive.org/details/talesofjohnolive00hobb.

In January 2014, the Literatures of Modernity Digital Publishing class at Ryerson University, directed by Professor Jason Boyd, moved the Internet Archive surrogate to Wikisource. Aided by the Wikisource community, the class proofread and formatted the OCR text of The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes. Following this process, a new digital surrogate was created by copying the text into a new namespace: “The Annotated The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes”.

Bibliographic Information

• Some Emotions and a Moral was first published in 1891, and was reprinted in 1892, 1893 (twice), 1894, 1901, 1905, and 1909. Source: The Internet Archive, The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes, (1909, p.iv).
• The Sinner's Comedy was first published in 1892, and was reprinted in 1893 (three times), 1894, 1901, 1905, and 1909. Source: The Internet Archive, The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes, (1909, p.iv).
• A Study in Temptations was first published in 1893, and was reprinted in that year (three times), in 1901, 1905, 1906, and 1909. Source: The Internet Archive, The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes, (1909, p.iv).
• A Bundle of Life was first published in 1893, and was reprinted in 1894, 1901, 1905, 1906, and 1909. Source: The Internet Archive, The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes, (1909, p.iv).
• These four stories were first published by The Cassell Publishing Company (1897, p.iv) and were first published together as a single volume, Wikisource The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes, in 1894, reprinted in that year, and again in 1909.

Editorial Principles

Wikilinking

Following the guidelines of Wikisource, wikilinking is a form of annotation. As such, links to original source materials, dictionary definitions, and encyclopedic summaries have been linked directly to Wikimedia projects whenever possible. Words and phrases that can be appropriately explained by Wikimedia linking do not require additional contextualization. Appropriateness has been left up to the individual editor and the community to decide on a case-by-case basis.

Notes and commentary

When a simple link to a Wikimedia project or external source does not provide adequate contextual knowledge of the word or phrase being annotated, a deeper annotation has been provided.

Page Numbers

Page numbers from the original are contained in the body of the text, enclosed in square brackets.

Repeated Annotations

Words that are repeated throughout the text (such as "wi'" or "ha'" etc.) should be annotated once at the beginning of the chapter.

Dialect translations

Words that have been written phonetically to reproduce local dialects have been translated.

Limitations of the Digital Edition

Due to the process of the original digitization of the source book and the movement of the digital surrogate of The Tales of John Oliver Hobbes into its current annotated form, a number of material aspects have been omitted from the annotated edition.

1. Typographic aspects such as typeface, folios, measure, and leading have been omitted.
2. Design elements like book cover and bookbinding are missing.
3. Sensual information like paper texture, ink texture, tears, stains and smells are absent.
4. User interventions like marginalia from the original scanned book are not included.