The Great American Novel people have awaited breathlessly, right under their noses the whole time. Published originally in 1896, "The Youth of the Old Dominion" is the history of the colony of Virginia, from John Smith's pre-colonial personal background starting in 1602 through the aftermath of Bacon's rebellion in 1676. Written as a novel but footnoted like a doctoral thesis, this is a genre mash-up. Consequently, aspects of the colony's history that might be debatable are supported by original sources and even explanations by the author for why he chose one source over another as the basis for his fiction. Fascinating, startling, and often contrary to modern political correctness, this book should be required reading in every public school system in America. As the author states in his preface, his goal was "to give to the Past the aspect and hue of Life, to excite a personal interest in events which would secure little or none as unclothed facts." In other words, an enjoyable and painless way to learn the sort of real American history to which 21st Americans are no longer exposed.
Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing. We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison. Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book. While remaining faithful to a writer's original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes. If the printer became distracted after placing an 'a' at the end of a line and then placed another 'a' at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too? Not us. That's why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.
