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A few interesting pages from this recently acquired book...

If Mr Todd has been deceased for a sufficiently long period for the work to be out of copyright (is it 50 years?) - or it is possible to trace and contact his estate or publisher to seek permission; might we consider getting a small facsimile re-print made?

The same goes for other ancient and rare works.

I believe there are specialist companies who will take the scanned pages of an old book, and prepare a properly bound re-print at modest expense; without the need for a print run of hundreds.

If others think this is a good idea, I will make enquiries to get an indication of cost.

Tom

Edit - According to the copyright service web site the work will be copyright until: "70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies."

There are few available on Amazon.

A few of the books I have bought recently are of the type that Tom describes above where someone has scanned an original and re-printed it in a fancy cover. To be honest, I really like hunting down the originals as most of them come at very low cost. I think I have bought around 15 original books that are 70-100 years old for an average of less than £5 each. The more well known and collectable books are more expensive but lots of these little ones are really nice to have in their old well-read and smelly state

Tom, once I update the full list of books I have I will send it to you. If there are any that you think would fit the bill for a re-print let me know.

Derek

That’s a cool typeface they’ve used to set this work.

Do you anything about the authors of these works? Some of them are recognisable as shippers, but are the others importers, journalists or something else?

Another option would be to scan and OCR anything that looks interesting and post it on the forums. With OCR and scanners being so much better these days, it shouldn’t be too difficult if there’s anything that might benefit from that treatment.

A few years ago, I scoured for every book on the subject, and thought I had found all but the most obscure and rare books. I didn't think to look for this on somewhere like Amazon - I assumed this was a rarity you had chanced on..!

Tom

uncle tom wrote:A few years ago, I scoured for every book on the subject, and thought I had found all but the most obscure and rare books. I didn't think to look for this on somewhere like Amazon - I assumed this was a rarity you had chanced on..!

No. What I have been doing is using the bibliography within each book to identify the sources used by each author and then searching for those on Amazon. I have also searched against the author's names as they often produced more than one book.

Any idea when William J Todd died? If he wrote this book in his 30's and it was published in 1926, it could well still be within copyright.

Have you contacted the publishers to ask permission to reproduce the book?

AHB wrote:Any idea when William J Todd died? If he wrote this book in his 30's and it was published in 1926, it could well still be within copyright.

Have you contacted the publishers to ask permission to reproduce the book?

No idea when he died and I have not asked permission to publish the above as I have assumed this is "fair usage".