All of these books were made for Project Gutenberg. Some were solo productions; some came at the end of extensive proofreading by other people. I’ve included the size of the “images” directory so you know what you’re loading; the HTML file by itself is generally less than 50K. The original texts are out of copyright in the United States. If you live in a different country, it is up to you to check your own laws; usually it’s the lifespan of the author plus some number of years, which can be tricky when a book is anonymous and undated.
I’m not going to name names, but if the more complicated illustrations don’t look right, you are better off using a different browser.
Three Blind Mice
Text by John Ivimey, illustrations by Walton Corbould. Around 1909. Your public library may have newer editions of the Ivimey text with a different illustrator; this is the original. The book includes music, in case you have forgotten the melody of Three Blind Mice. Oh, and it has a happy ending.
1.2MB images
The Rambles of a Rat
By A.L.O.E., 1864. No illustrations after the frontispiece and title page, but some great names, like “Whiskerandos” and the Russian rat “Dwishtswatshiksky”, Wisky for short. The author says that all her accounts of rat behavior are based on fact—except for the shipwreck chapter, which she admits she made up (at least she knows that rats can swim!)—giving us some lovely examples of ratty altruism.
More
200K text, 260K images
The Mouse’s Wedding
Part of Kobunsha’s Japanese Fairy Tale Series, printed 1892 on beautiful textured paper. No plot worth mentioning, but the pictures are gorgeous.
1.9MB images
The Mouse and the Christmas Cake
Very short picture book. No author; around 1870.
360K images
Grandmother Puss,
or The Grateful Mouse
Another short picture book. No author; around 1880.
516K images
Little Downy; or, The History of a Field Mouse
Dated 1822; published anonymously, but the author is known to be Catharine Parr Traill, one of several Canadian sisters who all wrote books. Sometimes it is hard to tell them apart. This one’s a “be kind to animals” story which, in approved 19th-century fashion, doesn’t hesitate to kill animals to make its point. The important thing is to make the humans feel bad.
620K images
Perez the Mouse
In Spanish-speaking countries, Perez the Mouse does the job of the tooth fairy. It’s all thanks to this book, written in 1894 at the request of the real-life mother of the main human character, “King Bubi I”, otherwise known as Alfonso XIII of Spain. English translation by Lady Moreton, who may have taken liberties; illustrations by G. Howard Vyse.
The Spanish original, Ratón Pérez, with drawings by Mariano Pedrero, is available from Project Gutenberg as ebook 36558. More 1.1MB images
The Nine Lives of a Cat: A Tale of Wonder
Charles Bennett, 1860. A really wonderful little picture book, even if the cat does use up all nine of its lives. It’s fun to imagine the story’s beginnings in the author’s family, with papa reciting “How-many-lives-has-the cat . . . got?” and the children shouting “EIGHT!”
1.4MB images
Frederick Hale: A Biographical Sketch
Unknown author, 1910. Done for Distributed Proofreaders (US). Not the single shortest text ever posted to Project Gutenberg, but definitely up there. Or down there, as the case may be. There are no rodents in this book. Also no cats, dogs, or non-human animals of any form. Feel free to change names and details to taste.
48K images
MiSTing of Alonzo and Melissa
Written and first published in 1804, pirated in 1811 and re-published many, many times afterward. The Great American Novel, with commentary by me and assorted proofreaders who just couldn’t help themselves. If you want the plain, unvarnished text you can find it at Project Gutenberg. But this version is more fun.
608K text, 98K images
Alida
This is not Alonzo and Melissa, but— Wait a minute. If it isn’t Alonzo and Melissa, why are huge chunks of the text word-for-word identical, with only the names changed? And how does the eponymous heroine contrive to travel so comfortably up the Erie Canal ten years before its opening? The answer will have to await successful channeling of the author, one Amelia Stratton Comfield, who published this miracle in 1840.
More
713K text, 92K images
For the insatiably curious: the complete list of every e-book I’ve ever been involved with.
More about Rambles:
Charlotte Maria Tucker wrote under the name A.L.O.E. (“A Lady of England”). This edition is 1864, but there may have been an earlier one; internal evidence suggests that it was written right after the Crimean war. The narrator is a rat, hence the title, but the story has much more to do with human morality. The main messages are “Be kind to the poor” and “Russians are human”.
The lack of illustrations is not much of a loss, since the title-page “rats” look a lot more like ferrets. The author does not appear to know that rats come in both male and female; in fact the story barely even acknowledges that humans do! In the Zoological Gardens chapters there’s some fun stuff about other rodents, including the German hamster (Syrian hamsters hadn’t been formally discovered yet), whose personality is exactly as described.
At the time this book was written, rats and their closest relatives really were grouped into the genus Mus. The current classification featuring genus Rattus didn’t become standardized until well into the 20th century.
More about Perez:
Purists would say that you are not allowed to call yourself “the First” if there has not yet been a Second. One of those purists is Miss Manners, who has some pointed things to say about a certain “King Juan Smith I”. This is fitting, because . . .
. . . in real life, “King Bubi the First” was Juan Carlos’s grandfather, Alfonso XIII of Spain. (The first eleven Alfonsos were kings of Castile only, but who’s counting? Clearly not Aragon, Catalonia, Andalusia, Galicia, Leon, Navarre and outlying areas.) As a posthumous child he was king from the instant he was born. If he had been a girl, his older sister would have ended up queen instead. Luckily she was only about five years old at the time and was probably placated with extra candy rations. Later developments suggest she and her sister had a lucky escape: although Alfonso didn’t formally abdicate until a few months before he died—not, as it turned out, a “very old man”—he was effectively out of the picture for the last ten years or so, what with one change of government and another.
Like most monarchs in his age bracket, Alfonso married a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, with the predictable result that two of his sons had hemophilia. For reasons that I may prefer not to know, the wikipedia articles on both Alfonso XIII and his father are absolutely fascinated by their respective Alfonsos’ illegitimate children, and have much more to say about them than about the marital ones.
Perez the Mouse was written when Alfonso alias Bubi was eight years old, at the request of his mother. This probably explains why the book is so oozy in its praise of Bubi’s mother. I suspect she was not too bright in real life, or she’d have told the author to cut it out.
History does not record whether the book caused Alfonso lifelong embarrassment or whether, instead, he shoved presentation copies down the metaphorical throats of every child he ever met for the rest of his life.
Oh, and the translator began life as Ada Margarette Smith. “Lady Moreton” definitely sounds swankier. She in turn must have thought “Bubi” sounded more Spanish than the original spelling, “Buby”.
More about Alida:
In addition to not being Alonzo and Melissa, this book is not Duke Karl Bernhard’s Travels in North America. It can’t be, what with those extensive descriptions of the Erie Canal—and of Sylvanus Thayer, who did not become director of West Point until several years after Alida’s visit. Our author(ess) apparently didn’t think it worth the trouble to look up these details. But she must have been vaguely aware that De Witt Clinton was not governor of New York in 1815, because she took care to edit out his name.
Alida is also not The Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, or Volume II (1796-97) of The New-York Weekly Magazine, or Interesting Events in the History of the United States, nor yet the poetic works of James Thomson or Mary Tighe—to name but a few. Any resemblances are purely coincidental. We know this must be so, because all relevant works were duly copyrighted—in some cases, in the very same office where Alida’s own copyright was filed. Besides, all proceeds were donated to charity. It must have been pure profit, because the list of subscribers is several pages long.
I have posted only the parallel texts. If you want to read the book “straight”, you can find it at Project Gutenberg.
|
Grand Central Station |
Rats Paintings MiSTings and More Of Mice and Keyboards eBooks Games |
Questions? Comments? Complaints? Corrections?
Contact the webmaster.