Modern English Biography, Frederic Boase
Introduction
Modern English Biography by Frederic Boase eventually contained 30,000 biographies of people dying in the period 1851 to 1900.
Published as follows:
- (1892) Volume I A-H Posted to PG 55059
- (1897) Volume II I-Q currently proj_submit_pgposted
- (1901) Volume III R-Z
- (1908) Volume IV A-C (supplement)
- (1912) Volume V (supplement)
- (1921) Volume VI (supplement)
As the project comments for proofing and formatting will be common between the volumes I have set up this Wiki page.
If you would like to know more about this biography you may wish to read author's preface from volume 1
abbreviations
To save space much use is made of abbreviations, either as initials such as F.R.S. for fellow of Royal Society or abbreviated words such as dau. for daughter. You can read the author's list of abbreviations from volume 1 here note its not 100% comprehensive and further lists of abbreviations appear in later volumes. Also although "half pay" is mostly abbreviated as h.p I have seen some instances where its spelt out in full, this may be true of others.
One abbreviation you will see a lot which is not in the above list is Illust. sp. and dr. which stands for Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News which was an English weekly magazine founded in 1874 and published in London.
what does that mean?
There are certain phrases or words that I had too look up the meaning of, in case others may like to know I have listed them below;
- His personalty was sworn under £70,000 This relates to the wealth of the person, having been with evidence of their assets to a solicitor and made a legal declaration, as their estate would be due death duties when they passed away.
Proofreading
You will see lots of abbreviations, apart from LL.B. and LL.D. and occasionally LL.M. all those formed with capital letters have a full stop and no space between each letter,see here for a list.
Although numerous place names within the UK predominate, you will also find foreign places mentioned connected with persons that spent time abroad, or came to the UK.
Some of the entries have notes directly underneath, but there are no actual footnotes. Likewise no actual illustrations, but a few pretty printers decorative motifs at the beginning and the end these can be ignored for proofreading, they will be marked up by the formatting round.
The most common OCR mistakes I have noticed the concern capital letter R being mis-OCRed as E or K. Considerable time has been spent to populate the Good Words list before proofreading starts. Not too many Bad Words, but I have included in the Bad Words examples such as change and changé where the word occurs both with and without an accent, plus all the roman numerals as these need to be throughly checked.
The OCR has also put a comma , by mistake where a full-stop (period) is in the original, these most frequently occur at the end of a word just before an abbreviation such as b. (for born) or bur. (for buried) or mar. (married) or d. (for died).
For latitude and longitude measurements, use the acute accent ´ (available on the character picker tool) for minutes, and two ´´ for seconds.
To finish these proofing guidelines some examples from the text (and how to proof them)
The page numbers and names above the line are not required and should have already been removed. However when an entry continues onto a new column the name is repeated at the top of the page Loftus, W. K. (Con.) in this example, these are not required in the final e-text (as the column page breaks don't apply) If I have left any in please remove them.
Every 16 pages at the bottom right underneath the last line of text is a footer containing a number in bold (4 in this example) these were used by the printer to collect together the large printed sheets to make up the book, don't include this number in the proofing.
Look out for foreign accents on persons names or titles of books etc,
I have seen superscript used for addresses occasionally, proof as
d. 28^B Albemarle st.
Some example ligatures proof as:
Athenæum Phœnix park archæological
As its not always clear the difference between the æ and œ in the first pair of examples, a useful hint is to "Google" search the word or book title to determine the correct spelling.
A particular problem occurs with the typeface used for the italic œ, (see below) making it indistinguishable from the italic æ I can only suggest "Google" or a dictionary to check usage.
Finally please do use the project forum to ask if you are unsure.
Formatting
There are lots of abbreviations some italic, follow the normal formatting guidelines in that the full stop following an italic abbreviation is included within the italic markup.
There are no illustrations, but a few pretty printers decorative motifs at the beginning and the end if you come across any of these just format as
[Illustration: printers decorative motif]
There are three other formating "rules" summarized below concerning italic markup with lots of examples following, otherwise all the italic markup should match the original exactly.
1. A persons name entry is often followed by their family descent within parenthesis, while the printer has used a mixture of upright and italic parenthesis the etext will have only upright parenthesis, but the full enclosed text is to be marked as italic.
2. If a publication month name is printed in italics e.g 19 Oct. 1867, then the day and year are also marked in italics e.g. 19 Oct. 1867
3. If a date or range of dates forms part of the title in italics, then the complete title is marked in italics, e.g Electoral facts from 1832 to 1852 impartially stated 1852, 2 ed. 1853. Note publication date(s) are never in italics.
Example 5:
ELLIOT, <sc>Charles Morgan</sc> (<i>9 child of John Elliot, F.R.S.</i>) <i>b.</i> Pimlico lodge, Westminster
Example 6:
Elliot, <sc>Lady Charlotte</sc> (<i>eld. dau. of Sir James Carnegie, 5 baronet 1799-1849</i>). <i>b.</i> 22
Example 7:
ELLIOTSON, <sc>John</sc> (<i>eld. son of Thomas Elliotson of 106 High st. Southwark, druggist</i>). <i>b.</i> High
Example 8:
FARGUS, <sc>Frederick John</sc> (<i>eld. son of Frederick Charles Fargus of Bristol, auctioneer, who d. 14 April 1868</i>). <i>b.</i> Bristol 26 Dec. 1847;
Example 9:
FIELD, <sc>Henry William</sc> (<i>4 son of John Field 1764-1845, umpire at Royal Mint, London</i>).
Example 10: Dates of publication, and page and column numbers.
1881. <i>bur.</i> Brompton cemetery, London 29 June. <i>Time</i>, <i>Feb. 1883 pp.</i> 213-17; <i>C. E. Pascoe's Dramatic List</i> (1880) 119-26; <i>The Players i</i>, 161 (1860), <i>portrait</i>; <i>Touchstone 28 Sep. 1878</i>, <i>portrait</i>; <i>The Era 25 June 1881 p.</i> 5 <i>col.</i> 4, <i>2 July p.</i> 9 <i>col.</i> 4, <i>and 9 July p.</i> 14 <i>col.</i> 1.
Example 11: Round brackets within title of publication in italics.
<i>Reports of cases in continuation of the above (with J. J. Lowndes)</i> 1844-49, 7 <i>vols.</i>
Example 12: Dates part of publication title, note the number 2 is within italic mark up as is shorthand for second edition, followed by dates of publication.
<i>Electoral facts from 1832 to 1852 impartially stated</i> 1852, <i>2 ed.</i> 1853.
An example from index, most entries only reference a single page, but see below for examples of multiple pages. Also notice both "Corn" and "Cork" are repeated, but kept as separate index entries.
Format as
/* Coral, Jane <i>d.</i> 1858, painter 1601. Cork, bishop of 851, great exhibition at 842, lord lieutenant 1038, St. Finbarre cath. 1233, water works 246. Cork, Cloyne and Ross, bishops of 1060, 1233. Corn, corn merchant 1378, drilling machines 1126, grinding corn, improvements in 353. Corn. Anti-corn law league, A B C of the 98, founders of 98, 1272, final meeting 98, lecturers, members of and speakers 11, 361, 659, 1096, 1141, meeting in Covent Garden 397, secretary 1589. */
Post Processing
I gave no particular guidelines for the HTML, but now Vol. 1 is done, the other volumes should keep to a similar "look".
The books have a plain cover, for Vol. I. released to PG the title page has been used as the cover.