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Re: original illustrations from 20,000 Leagues

From: Norm Wolcott <nwolcott2~at~kreative.net>
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 20:12:32 -0400
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

One reason is that the plates tended to wear out so later versions were not so good. Also a decent scan requires grey scale, giving some MB per picture. The good illustrations being in the earlier books, collectors are not eager to squash them on a scanner. They could be scanned with special book scanners, available in rare book libraries, but this requires paid employees and $$. Project Gutenberg has access to a book scanner, but it is in San Francisco, and unless there is a Vernian there with time to spare, and access to some valuable books, there is not mch hope. Also a collector is not eager to see his pristine engraving reproduced in high quality for a few cents a copy. That limits you to libraries, who hesitate to let you breathe on a rare book.

Also one would not want to limit it to just one book. There are 4500 illustrations in the Hetzel corpus, not all of the same quality. At even a modest 600 dpi 256 level grey scale that is 8 MB per illustration or about 40 GB, probably 10 DVD's. And that is not taking into account the fact that many pages may need to be scanned in color to filter out foxing etc from old pages and require much hand editing. Here is your assignment, if you wish to take it!.

Actually there are a number of low res scans on the web, 100 dpi or less. Use google and the illustrations option

nwolcott2~at~post.harvard.edu Friar Wolcott, Gutenberg Abbey, Sherwood Forrest
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Todd
  To: Jules Verne Forum
  Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2004 10:25 PM
  Subject: original illustrations from 20,000 Leagues


  I was wondering why there are no scans available on the web of the original illustrations from 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. I have a mass market paperback version of the story in French, and it has the original illustrations, but the reproductions in the paperback are quite poor. Other than that, I haven't seen the original illustrations anywhere. Anyone know why?

  -Todd
Received on Wed 04 Aug 2004 - 06:17:00 IDT

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