The Great War 1914 - 1919

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » July 11th, 2009, 2:54 am

I've made this thread to continue with Richard's suggestion here.

rlaughton wrote:I am a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Study Group which you can find over at our site here:

http://www.cefresearch.com/phpBB2/

One of our members told us about this site and the recording of "The Escape of a Princess Pat". I followed the link, downloaded the book and enjoyed the LibriVox experience very much. As a semi-retired person on a treadmill every morning, this was a great relief of the boredom!

Although other readers were good, I was encouraged to come here because of the readings of Mike Vendetti, as he appeared to be someone that was very good at what he was doing and could probably be doing much more than volunteering for this work.

I have a number of books from the Great War (WWI 1914-1919) some of which our team have transcribed so they are available to all to read (we put those on http://www.archive.org and so this process of having an audio version is of interest. I suspect we could assemble a team of our members, who have knowledge of what they are reading, to add to the LibriVox collections. Just an idea but I thought I would see if there is an interest in the Great War collections.

My congratulations to all of you!

Richard

I see that the five-volume The Great War by G.H. Allen and others is available on the Internet Archive. These volumes were published between 1915 and 1921, and so would be available to record for Librivox. (The author died in 1950, though, so not available to European readers to participate, unfortunately.)

Ruth

miss stav · Post by **miss stav** » July 11th, 2009, 3:08 am

Other books about the first world war witch can be recorded for Librivox are:
One of Ours by Willa Sibert Cather [adopted]
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2369 -
Michael by E. F. Benson
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2072 -
Stav.

rlaughton · Post by **rlaughton** » July 11th, 2009, 7:59 am

The book that I had in mind is one of the great reference books of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the Great War of 1914-1919.

The book:

Livesay, J. F. B. 1919. Canada's Hundred Days - With the Canadian Corps from Amiens to Mons., Aug. 8 - Nov. 11, 1918. Thomas Allen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. [adopted]

Although I have an original copy of the book, a digital version of the book is available on the web here:

Canada's Hundred Days: at SCRIBD

and as well at the Archive.org site here:

Canada's Hundred Days: at Archive.org from UofT Collection

John Frederick Bligh Livesay was born in 1875 and died in 1944. I would therefore suggest that this book is free of all copyright and is in the public domain. Most certainly the University of Toronto would not have uploaded it if there was a problem.

The book is more of a NOVEL than it is a military reference text, although it is very factual and may only be of interest to history buffs and great war enthusiasts - of which there are thousands.

Richard

edited first paragraph, that was Duguid's text not Livesay's that was to be in 6 volumes

ExEmGe · Post by **ExEmGe** » July 11th, 2009, 11:00 am

And could I suggest
Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 by Anonymous [this is now in the catalog]
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18910
I should love to hear it read by some of our readers of the female persuasion
(In some parts you probably need a fairly stiff upper lip though)

CarlManchester · Post by **CarlManchester** » July 11th, 2009, 3:54 pm

I recorded some WWI stuff for this collection:

http://librivox.org/local-color-collection-vol-001/

BellonaTimes · Post by **BellonaTimes** » July 11th, 2009, 4:13 pm

One of my first solos was A Traveller in War-time by the American writer Winston Churchill. Project Gutenberg also appears to have his (or is it Winnie's?) series of war reportage. There's also the Observations of an Orderly project in our Books section. Also look for E.E. Cummings' The Enormous Room, his autobio about WWI service as an ambulance driver. Oh, and PG also has the New York Times' special series of periodicals from the war, ditto Punch's coverage.

rlaughton · Post by **rlaughton** » July 11th, 2009, 7:06 pm

I have been checking into the 7 Volume series I have entitled:

THE GREAT EVENTS OF THE GREAT WAR

I have the full set and it has a 1923 date in my series but I have been able to find that all the volumes were written and published prior to 1920.

The University of California has posted some of the volumes to the Internet Archive, as have others but I have not found the full 7 volumes all in one spot on a similar service. It may be there, I just did not locate the set.

http://www.archive.org/details/greateventsofgre03horn

Each book is around 400 pages and I doubt that all the sections are of interest to a mass audience but most certainly specific sections, chapters or volumes are of interest. For example, the details of the creation and signing of the Treaty of Versailles is incredible to read, as it contains the original reports of the various country representatives who were there - including the Germans.

For we Canadians, there is a specific section on our roll in the Great War, which some time ago I scanned and posted to the Internet Archive:

http://www.archive.org/details/CanadasPartInTheGreatWar

For the international audience there was a similar high quality report on the development of the armistice which I scanned and posted here:

http://www.archive.org/details/TheArmistice

As I am a "newbie" here I am not sure if you do just parts of a series with volumes, but it would be a good way to start on such a large collection. Then again, maybe those of us that are avid Great War Enthusiasts are just too small a group to make such an undertaking reasonable. No use recording if nobody is going to listen!

Always open to comments,
Richard

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » July 12th, 2009, 4:07 am

rlaughton wrote:The book that I had in mind is one of the great reference books of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the Great War of 1914-1919.

The book:

Livesay, J. F. B. 1919. Canada's Hundred Days - With the Canadian Corps from Amiens to Mons., Aug. 8 - Nov. 11, 1918. Thomas Allen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Although I have an original copy of the book, a digital version of the book is available on the web here:

Canada's Hundred Days: at SCRIBD

and as well at the Archive.org site here:

Canada's Hundred Days: at Archive.org from UofT Collection

John Frederick Bligh Livesay was born in 1875 and died in 1944. I would therefore suggest that this book is free of all copyright and is in the public domain. Most certainly the University of Toronto would not have uploaded it if there was a problem.

The book is more of a NOVEL than it is a military reference text, although it is very factual and may only be of interest to history buffs and great war enthusiasts - of which there are thousands.

Richard

edited first paragraph, that was Duguid's text not Livesay's that was to be in 6 volumes

I have looked at this book. It is divided into 4 parts which would be doable here. Each part has it's own subtitle too. I would love to see this in the catalogue. It would take some time though to get it all done.

Against my better judgment, I am considering BCing and MCing this. (Real life issues). It would be great Richard, if you could co BC in order for you to learn the ropes. Check this out and see if you are up to it:

http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13510

Esther

rlaughton · Post by **rlaughton** » July 12th, 2009, 6:28 am

I read through the pages and it appears to be plausible, and certainly a great way to learn how the system works. I am a bit of an organization freak, so that fits nicely. I would be better at that than being a reader.

I assume there are some samples of ongoing projects that I could look at - or are those restricted to the group that is working on the project?

I will read some more of the posts, time to learn, learn, learn.

Best Regards,
"Newbie"

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » July 12th, 2009, 11:25 am

Best way to learn is to DO!

Once you feel comfortable, you can try filling out the BC template and posting in the Launchpad.

Mention that I will CO-BC and MC this for you so no one else jumps in. LOL

Esther

rlaughton · Post by **rlaughton** » July 12th, 2009, 2:17 pm

I am starting the process.

I have set up my own page on TELNIC so I have all the material close at hand. I will add to that is the project gets underway. It is a great tool (the TELNIC system) to organize different groups you are involved with on an ongoing basis. And cost effective!

So it is added to my signature.

Richard

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » July 12th, 2009, 3:06 pm

Hey that's pretty cool!

Esther

rlaughton · Post by **rlaughton** » July 12th, 2009, 5:41 pm

Esther:

Okay, first step complete - or at least my feeble attempt at success on my first try!

Launch Pad: Canada's Hundred Days

Richard
I take credit for all mistakes, as I am very good at making them!

russiandoll · Post by **russiandoll** » July 16th, 2009, 1:37 am

Good luck with the project, Richard - this is a little off-topic, and just a tiny point of idle interest, really, but the thread title intrigued me: 1914-1919?
Now, a trip to Wikipedia clarified:

A formal state of war between the two sides persisted ... until signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919 ...
Some war memorials date the end of the war as being when the Versailles treaty was signed in 1919; by contrast, most commemorations of the war's end concentrate on the armistice of 11 November 1918.

The dates that Every Schoolboy Knows for WWI here in Britain are 1914-18 - is it the same in Canada (with historians and learned societies like yours diverging from common parlance for the sake of technical accuracy

)? Or would most people in Canada think of it as the 1914-19 War?

rd

rlaughton · Post by **rlaughton** » July 16th, 2009, 4:29 am

The official end of the Great War was December 31, 1921 as that is when Britain passed legislation cancelling the Declaration of War of August 4, 1914. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission uses that date as the final date of any soldiers killed or died in the Great War. The "Treaty of Versailles" was not ratified until January 19, 1920.

To keep this on-topic, the writings of the Great War and the Treaty of Versailles narrative is one of the other topics I have suggested. That 7 volume series would be a massive undertaking and not all sections would be of interest, but certainly for different countries there are great sections (also very distinct or stand-alone sections) that would fit nicely with LibriVox. The Armistice and the Versailles Treaty are one of my favourite sections and most would find it fascinating listening.

Details on the chronology are here in my "Chronology of the Great War", which is a small part of my MATRIX Project.

For further discussion, you can join us at the CEFSG Forum, otherwise we might get our hands slapped here for being off-topic!