ffred's
nearly-forgotten treasures"Age is now like air, my dear fellow; felt by all, but seen by none."
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"I never joke but when I am in earnest—like a Frenchman, who is never grave but when he is dancing."
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...punch is a wonderful opener of hearts...
While transcribing Transmigration by Mortimer Collins, I encountered a reference to Theodore Hook. Although an extensive compilation of his short humorous works is available here at Project Gutenberg, his most famous and popular novel, Gilbert Gurney, is not. Hence, I decided to take it on.
The text came from these scans of volumes I, II, and III of the 1836 edition, backed up by these scans. Obvious errors were corrected, and some punctuation standardized. Some inconsistent or obsolete spellings were updated (notably "goodnature" and "shew"). An occurrence of "travestie" was kept as is, and an occurrence of "ayte" (evidently a typo for "ayrie") was changed to "eyrie."
So here it is: the master HTML version, the home-brew Kindle version, and the actual Amazon publication.
February 10, 2025
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Here are the other novels by Theodore Hook, all of which have scans available online:
[Two novels, Fathers and Sons and Peregrine Bunce, were published posthumously, the former left in the middle of revision, and the latter apparently having been finished by another writer.]