Afterlives: I found it on the Google books

Previous blogs about Voyage en Pologne, Russie, Suède, Dannemarc, &c.:

1 Brief Introduction: “Boats against the current”: Discovering Northern Europe and Asia

2.1 Origins: Dive deeper into the origins: a lifelong career of two passionate travelers

2.2 Additions: What else besides the content?

2.4 Illustrations: To travel, you need ______.

If you enter the book’s name, Voyage en Pologne, Russie, Suède, Dannemarc, &c, into the Google search, the first websites that jump in front of your eyes might be surprising: Amazons. For a voyage journal that was first published in 1784, I was not even expecting people to sell it as a secondhand book. However, I surprisingly found out two new versions, one published in 2010 and the other in 2018. Perhaps “version” is not the proper word, since instead of rearranging the texts or editing, these two call themselves reproductions and copies of the original one.

Figure.1 Screenshots from Amazon.in (India). You can also find the same version on Amazon.ca (Canada)

 

Figure 2-1. Screenshots from Amazon.com, Hardcover. You can also find the same version on Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom)
Figure 2-2. Screenshots from Amazon.com, Paperback.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Besides Amazon and Google Books, the full text of Voyage en Pologne, Russie, Suède, Dannemarc, &c is available online through Hathi Trust Digital Library. This French translation seems only to have one version, published in 1786 by Genève’s Barde, Manget & comp, and Paris’s Buisson.

Full text online link: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000814562. The original source is from the University of Michigan.

The English version has several different editions. The first one was published in 1784 with three volumes. One year later, the second version came out (I could find two volumes on Hathi Trust), then in 1792, the fourth edition was published in London with five volumes. There is no record about the third edition, but the French translation was published in between the second and the fourth one.

The search result of the English editions: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Search/Home?lookfor=Travels%20into%20Poland%2C%20Russia%2C%20Sweden%2C%20and%20Denmark&searchtype=all&ft=&setft=false

Going back to the French one. The digitalized book seems to be clear and complete, but several essential features are missing comparing to the physical copy. Fist of all, the digitalized version cannot show the users the beautiful spattered decorations around the edges of the books (see in Blog 1.). Another problem that might occur when digitalizing is the omission of folded illustrations, especially larger maps. From Figure 3. and Figure 4., we can see that the pictures either disappear in the digitalized version or become incomplete through the process.

Figure 3-1. The digitalized copy, page 80 and 81
Figure 3-2. The printed copy, the folded map between page 80 and 81
Figure 3-3. The printed copy, with the map unfolded
Figure 4-1. The digitalized copy, page 170 and 171 with half of the image
Figure 4-2. The printed copy, page 171 with the image unfolded

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The omission of the images may cause significant inaccuracy when learning about the book and its importance when it was published. Since these illustrations require a separate printing process, as I mentioned in the last blog, the finesse of them reflects the cost of printing.

Digitalizing technology has made the book more accessible to the public. However, we must not neglect the issues that could cause by digitalizing. The key is to recognize that there are two sides to a coin, and we should learn from both the digital copy and the printed one.

Figure 5. The illegible marginalia.
Figure 6. The misprinted text.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for reading my blogs! This is the last entry for the book Voyage en Pologne, Russie, Suède, Dannemarc, &c., and I would like to thank my dear Professor, Colby College’s Special collection’s instructors, and my classmates for the completion of this Pet Book Project.