Talk:David Copperfield/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Continuation of translating

New section, continuing the previous one, which was getting rather leggy.

Prairieplant, before I rush on with any further translating, I thought I should first check with you, in case you had plans to work on an area that particularly interested you? Rwood128 (talk) 23:25, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

I have not decided on a section yet. Rwood128. Are you saving 6.3 La chose sociale, last part of Source et contexte, for another section on effects on society? Choose what you like and I will choose what you have not done yet. --Prairieplant (talk) 23:41, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant, I have done a little work on "La chose sociale" and wondered if "L'aspect documentaire" might be combined with it in a new section, plus maybe "Depiction of Victorian child exploitation" and "La réhabilitation des prostituées". What do you think? I plan to try and slow down, though this is interesting work. Rwood128 (talk) 23:54, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds good, Rwood128. Maybe I can try the first subsection under Thématique, La dimension autobiographique, which has three parts. I find it interesting also, and really enjoy watching this article have more substance. --Prairieplant (talk) 00:04, 6 March 2019 (UTC)––––That sounds like a useful project. Rwood128 (talk) 11:56, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

For the Forster ref, I found in the Project Gutenberg html version on line, then we could use that directly, if that is appealing for naming his son after Fielding. But I see that you have a book by the 6th son named for Henry Fielding, and a page number. Maybe use both, putting the online version of Forster's biography after the H F Dickens citation? --Prairieplant (talk) 00:12, 6 March 2019 (UTC). Thanks for sorting this out. Rwood128 (talk) 12:00, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant, great translation of the interesting new material. Rwood128 (talk) 12:46, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 I have learned editing trivia: harvsp used in French means harvard system, sans parenthèses, and harvnb used in English means harvard system no brackets. Same effect. I did the rest of Themes, so that leaves "L'aspect documentaire" for another section. I cannot come up with a good way to say, Le long parcours initiatique, and google's best effort is poor: The long initiatory journey. Simply drop "initiatory"? --Prairieplant (talk) 16:53, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant, feel free to ignore my suggestions above, re "L'aspect documentaire" and "La réhabilitation des prostituée". With regard to "Le long parcours initiatique," perhaps you might ignore the French and create your own heading? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwood128 (talk • contribs) 11:18 March 6, 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 The Long journey of change is today's idea. My brain is overloaded from all the new notions! I will sleep on it. Plus some sentences of introduction under the section title Themes would be good, to sketch the path of those subsections. Demain. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:02, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

That heading sounds good, Prairieplant. You certainly have been productive! Rwood128 (talk) 22:33, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant I'm working on the final part of "Source et contexte," "La chose sociale". This clearly overlaps with "La réhabilitation des prostituée," but I'm leaving that matter for now. "La chose sociale" is another vague section, which requires an introductory paragraph and some additional material to make things clearer. Rwood128 (talk) 13:54, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 I translated Illustrations, being in a mind for images. I took a subsection from Le point de vue and added it there, as it talks through an illustration by Phiz, the interaction between illustrator and author, and explains how the illustrations are not from David's view point but from a third person view, adding information without words. I really liked that subsection, but I remembered it as being about Illustration. If you think it should go back into Point of view, when that is translated, it can be moved. I chose one image by each of three illustrators for the Other illustrators subsection. The text is short, so I put the clear template at the end, else the last image looks like it belongs to the next section. John Jordan wrote in the book edited by Paroissian, and I do hope that page number is for his writing. I hope La chose sociale is not too much work to make it clear. --Prairieplant (talk) 12:17, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant Lots of good new stuff! It has been interesting researching the various aspects of "La chose sociale", which is close to being finished. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwood128 (talk) date12:19, March 9, 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 Glad you like it. I started on the third part of Thematique, in my sandbox. I am halfway through, but need to make a new title, better than The documentary aspect, and clear up reference errors I may have made. If any sections of that are in La chose sociale, I will delete them from the ssection. I suspect you will post to the article before I do. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:34, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant I just plan on completing La chose sociale, and adding to it from other sources. But cannot get back to it until Friday at the earliest. Good to hear that you are still working on Thematique. Rwood128 (talk) 10:42, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant you have certainly been busy. I have been working on a print article, but I will try and finish my short piece and then carefully read all that you have done. Rwood128 (talk) 12:47, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128, it needs a good reading, some awkward phrases there. One end of sentence made no sense in either language, to me, despite a long search for synonyms. I will appreciate a careful reading! On the other hand, the richness of this novel is coming through. I hope your print article goes well. - - Prairieplant (talk) 02:34, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant 'The rehabilitation of prostitutes' and 'Prison discipline' should I think be merged into the 'Social issues' section, because of the duplication. I did not give pages for the quotations from DC, because I only have a cheap 1898 edition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwood128 (talk • contribs) 11:23, March 17, 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 that is fine. We run into the same source, two different years of publication, with Collins on Dickens and Crime. Is it wild to assume the page numbers stay the same in succeeding editions? You cited 2016 edition, and in Prison Discipline, it is the 1962 edition. Right now I left them as separate sources. Maybe the 5 pages of the 1962 edition can be found in the 2016 edition, which I think is an e-book?? Being hopeful, here.

Will you take those two up and merge them? Some duplication, to be sure, though in Sources it is the back drop and in themes, it is considered a theme, but says the same thing really. And the Fallen woman section touches the theme again, in a different way, so not a duplication. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:37, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant I have difficulty with many of the headings found in the French article, which often do not clearly indicate the nature of the content. Just some examples:

• 8.2 The long journey of change
• 8.2.1 Strata of life
• 8.2.3 The hard path to the right balance
• 8.3 The documentary aspect, social issues of the times
• 8.3.1 The surface of things
• 8.3.2 The implicit questions

With regard to "Social issues" I think that this content belongs under "Themes/:The documentary aspect of social issues of the times", rather than "Sources and context," and I will merge, unless you object. Also "Regional speech" is obviously not a theme. Rwood128 (talk) 13:16, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I have changed the bibliographic entry for Dickens and Crime. Rwood128 (talk) 13:29, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128, excellent edits throughout the article, thanks for all your work on both organization and copy edit / phrasing of ideas. One question, could we have Themes, Bildungsroman and Themes Social questions? This is a visual thing with me, because the heading size for a third and fourth level heading is exactly the same, and the structure, so clear in the Table of Contents, is not clear as one reads the article. If it is possible to have two sections with Theme in the title, then the structure might be clearer as one reads the text. I will not make the change if that seems trivial.

I will look at references. There are some authors added in short refs, and the matching long ref is not in the Bibliography list. The ones I saw first are Lynch 1999. Bakhtin 1996, p. 21. and Jeffers 2005, p. 2. All were cited in the Bildungsroman section, defining that term and and noting how commonly this approach is used by Dickens.

Lynch 1999 -- I found this book by Jack Lynch, Glossary of Literary and Rhetorical Terms, published by Rutgers in 1998 but I cannot yet find the isbn, and there is a google books link, here and an online short definition of bildungsroman here. Is this what you used?

Bakhtin is Mikhail Bakhtin, who wrote lots about novels in the 1930s and 1940s. I found this title, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin, U of Texas, 1983, isbn of 978-0292715349, so not matching 1996. Discourse in the Novel is another title by him, an essay, perhaps? I found images of a book with his words, but information on publisher, year, etc. He died in 1975, so it is a reprint of something, but what?

Jeffers 2005 is perhaps this book, Apprenticeships: The Bildungsroman from Goethe to Santayana, by T Jeffers, published by Springer 2005, with isbn of 978-1403979155, and available as a google book here, with Chapter 3 on David Copperfield's Self-Cultivation, starting on page 55, using the google book to learn that. Page 2 is in the Prologue, and Jeffers quotes Bakhtin, and talks about how the bildungsroman came about. Thomas L Jeffers is, best I can find, teaching at Marquette U in Milwaukee now.

Let me know if I guessed right on Lynch and Jeffers, and which Bakhtin book is the one to add to the Bibliogrpahy. --Prairieplant (talk) 08:03, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Prairieplant. I'll check these later. By the way re periods after initials, e.g, John O. Jordan. The dropping of the period is a trend rather than British usage. Wikipedia suggests using it, . Rwood128 (talk) 17:13, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I've starting working on the points that you raised Prairieplant. Sorry to be slack with the citations. Does my revision to the formatting of headings work for you? Rwood128 (talk) 20:18, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128, yes that method of using the * makes the headings appear different and that works for me. I did not know that format method. I learned British style from other editors changes. There is not a nice page clearly showing the standards for British English, but this page talks more about periods in initials. I have seen no periods in British newspaper articles; the article says to put no space between two initials, Abbreviation#Conventions followed by publications and newspapers, which is new to me and does look so odd, ah well. Wikipedia is not clear about initial of names, Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Abbreviations. Might we refer to Jordan as Jordan after the first reference? Which Wikipedia advice are we supposed to follow? I will put those references in the Bibliography and used the short refs again. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:51, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant, re initials the following from the University of Sussex seems to sum up the current situation in the UK:

A person's initials are a kind of abbreviation, and these are usually followed by full stops: John D. Rockefeller, C. Aubrey Smith, O. J. Simpson. Increasingly, however, there is a tendency to write such initials without full stops: John D Rockefeller, C Aubrey Smith, O J Simpson. And note the rare special case illustrated by Harry S Truman: the S in this name never takes a full stop, because it's not an abbreviation for anything; President Truman's parents actually gave him the middle name S. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwood128 (talk • contribs) 08:40, March 22, 2019 (UTC)

Yes, this is hard to settle, Rwood128. The Guardian newspaper wrote a review on the early books in Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith's series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which has a character named in the printed books as Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni. In the review, he was Mr JLB Matekoni. It did not matter that the author wrote it one way, The Guardian has its standards and follows them. The University of Sussex article is good and clear guidance, but it was written before Wikipedia came into being. I imagine whatever we choose to do, some future editor will change it. That is what happens to me, at any rate, when I think I am putting an article in British style consistently; then another editor comes around and changes it. So let us be happy with how we work it out. Far more important is the big picture editing you have done, re-arranging sections and paragraphs to a better set of sections, with a good flow. --Prairieplant (talk) 03:55, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

References

Rwood128, I translated the rest of Prémices et rédaction and titled it Development of the novel, placing that before Publication history. In Great Expectations, the only other article on a Dickens novel with a Development section, Publication history is mixed in with development. Ought that be done in this article? Plus I added to the lead with some of the facts from that section, all tied to one source and the same page in that source. This was a spur of the moment project, not something I planned for the weekend. --Prairieplant (talk) 12:35, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

PS I tried making the Publication history and Major print editions as subsections to Development of the novel See how that looks. We can change it back by removing = signs. --Prairieplant (talk) 12:57, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant I'll look into this later, It's great that you have added this. Rwood128 (talk) 13:42, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant what do you feel about moving "Development of the novel" to follow "Sources and context"? This seems to me a more appropriate place for it (or even earlier?). Rwood128 (talk) 12:11, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 I think it should be moved up, not be the last topic. Yes, there is a logical link to Sources and Context. I wonder if the list of topics in MOS:NOVELS is a guide simply to the topics one might cover, or suggested order. But the order varies with the novel and how much has been written about that novel, which in the case of David Copperfield, is very much, entire books of essays, books on one aspect. --Prairieplant (talk) 19:07, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant it looks like MOS:NOVELS is suggesting the order for the main sections. Rwood128 (talk) 19:17, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 then a lot of juggling may be needed! There are links to examples of Background, and it has subsections peculiar to that novel (The Lord of the Rings, The Halo Graphic Novel, and The World Without Us), each one has a background section, and the latter two open the article with it. Some have publication tied to background, another separates the two. Literary significance needs to move down, I think. But in general, I think you have a good sense of the big picture in this article, and can move sections around for better reading. I know when I first started looking at articles about novels, it was called Development of the novel, not Background. That title is used for Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Persuasion by Jane Austen. Middlemarch by George Eliot opens with Background section. Vanity Fair (novel) by Thackeray opens witg Title section. Nostromo opens with Background section, but Lord Jim has none. Heart of Darkness starts with Composition and publication. I am not paying heed to the rating of the various articles, just looking to see the use of Background or Development of the novel in articles about major novels. Crime and Punishment, a Good Article, opens with Background. The Hobbit another Good Article, has Background as subsection to Concept and creation, after Plot summary and characters. There seems to be latitude in order of the sections. I wonder when they changed the suggested section title in the Manual of Style? Does it matter? --Prairieplant (talk) 20:06, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

It seems, Prairieplant, that MOS:NOVELS is often ignored. Personally I think the history of a novel's creation should come before themes, but MOS:NOVELS argues that "themes" should be near the beginning because "in many ways this is the most important section of the page". In the case of some major novels there is in fact no (or little) discussion of theme. I will move 9.1 to 9.3 to an earlier position. However, if you feel that we should follow the "rules" more closely, feel free to revert, etc. Rwood128 (talk) 12:17, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant, I'd add, that because of the importance of the autobiographical element in David Copperfield there is good reason to discuss it before themes. Rwood128 (talk) 12:42, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 The re-org is looking good. My one change is to keep the Publication in monthly instalments section as part of Development, because I had to keep looking at the dates of the first serials for the Development section as I modified it after the translation. Part of the changes in the story happened as the earlier serial issues were already printed and sold. this has always amazed me about Dickens, that he wrote the intalments, never considering a change to the beginning as he neared the end of his complex stories -- which he might have done if wrote the novel and published it in whole, or the instalments came after he had finished the writing. But he did change a character's development when he got early feedback that the character was not so good (Miss Mowcher). The rules from MOS seem not to suit the best way to tell the story of every novel. When I looked at all those articles, with their variation in sections written, variation in the order of the sections, the articles worked well because they presented that novel well. In short, I agree with your reasoning. Did you leave Literary Sig section where it is because of the opening paragraph? I plopped it after Characters back when it was translated, not knowing where to put it. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:28, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant thanks for those suggestions. Rwood128 (talk) 10:54, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 I did another unexpected burst of translating, Le Point de vue / Point of view, the two subsections remaining. One subsection I did already and moved to the Illustrations section. It is at my Sandbox now here. Where should I place it, instead of plopping it? --Prairieplant (talk) 11:40, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

That's great Prairieplant, I was wondering about that section. What do you feel about placing point of view (the three sections?) before the "Literary significance section"? Rwood128 (talk) 12:19, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 That sounds good. I can put them together and before Literary Sig. I hope you read it, as there was some tricky translation. --Prairieplant (talk) 12:24, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 Good edits, thank you. Re explaining the humor of Brooks of Sheffield, I added two newspaper articles that mention the name, and that there is humor, but do not explain the humor. the word play. In part I think Brits know Sheffield well as the place where their silverware was made, and get the joke part more quickly, then look to whether it was cruel humor or just another name for DC. There is one blog post by Arnie Perlstein that talk at length about this device, and then compares it to Jane Austen's writing! I did not include that one, but it is found here. There is an article in JSTOR that may help, but the abstract is not enough to know for certain, and I do not have full access to JSTOR articles; here is the article by Richard Lettis on The Names of David Copperfield, 2002; Lettis is not yet a source in this article on any other topic. The abstract of Lettis' article says "the cold appelation of the deadly stepfather, Murdstone." The one error in the Urban Dictionary, the ref used by French Wikipedia, not understanding Sheffield as the source of knives and cutlery, seems minor to me. The writer was not British enough to know that reputation of Sheffield with silverware, which the Wikipedia article on Sheffield mentions buried in the History section, the mention in Chaucer 14th century and 1740s the crucible steel process. There is nothing about most silverware coming from there in England. So, working on it. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:49, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant, perhaps we should delete the note? This is a minor point–though interesting in what it reveals about the way Dickens's mind worked. The use of "brook" is obscure and hard to explain: "2a. To make use of (food); in later usage, to digest, retain, or bear on the stomach"; "3. To put up with, bear with, endure, tolerate [a figurative sense of ‘to stomach’ in 2]. Now only in negative or preclusive constructions" (Oxford English Dictionary). Murdstone has to "brook" the presence of Copperfield. Or he finds it hard to "stomach" him (Stomach: "5. To brook, endure, put up with, tolerate" (0ED)). Rwood128 (talk) 13:18, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 I like the note. It makes clear a pun I did not grasp myself; I simply took it that Murdstone did not want Davy to know they were speaking of him. Now, it is additionally a clever pun and a mean name. Can you read JSTOR articles? I think it is brook as in the sentence "I cannot brook your insubordination" is the meaning here. Which of course was not something to say in a letter to a company in Sheffield named Brookes. In the text, I added "first" episode, as now I know it is in Chapters 10 and 64 as well. --Prairieplant (talk)

Rwood128 is there anything left to consider for translation? Récapitulation, which is part of Plot / Intrigue, but has some analysis of the novel, how the retrospective chapters were used and so on. Anything from the character descriptions? The poetry of I, given up for its terseness. The lead, which I think has a few sentences not precisely in the article, like this sentence "À première vue, l'œuvre est modelée à la manière lâche et quelque peu décousue des « histoires personnelles » (personal histories) très en vogue dans la Grande-Bretagne du XVIIIe siècleN 4 ; mais en réalité, David Copperfield est un roman soigneusement structuré et unifié." and this phrase ending the long sentence following the one I just quoted, "histoire, écrit Paul Davis, d'un « Monsieur Tout le Monde victorien en quête de compréhension de soi » (« a Victorian everyman seeking self-understanding »6)." Maybe the translations can go into the article and the lead? I have added to the lead here and there, to pick up some of the article, but it could use a review. --Prairieplant (talk) 02:49, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant, re article on Copperfield's names, while I can access JSTOR that particular article is only available to me as hard copy–if I can, I'll try and read it sometime. Please add anything that you think will improve the article, including the plot summary. The "Intrigue" (Plot) section seems very lengthy, but you can better judge, than me, what is useful. I am thinking about doing something with the "Initial reception" section, as well as on the novel's subsequent reputation. Rwood128 (talk) 15:12, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 that seems a good plan. I will look at translations, and then remove the flag on the article. Plus see which refs can be improved; I would like to replace Schmoop in the Symbolism section. As to subsequent reputation, I found this link while looking for something else. It is part of a book, I think, by Gareth Cordrey, discussing the revitalized interest in all of Dickens works, and David Copperfield in particular from about 1900. The fading Empire and WWI left the English feeling low, and Dickens raised their spirits. His books sold in huge numbers, as copyrights had lapsed. I put the following in my sandbox to remind me.

And another, with the story of revived interest in Dickens and his novels after 1900, and how new illustrations were made, some used as cards in a pack of cigarettes. All to make Englishmen feel better about themselves, per Gareth Cordrey. On Victorian Web here —Prairieplant (talk) 15:54, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Subsequent reputation section: citation question

Rwood128 In this sentence, do the page numbers refer to the book by Leavis? "However, in 1948, F. R. Leavis in The Great Tradition, contentiously, excluded Dickens from his canon, characterising him as a ‘popular entertainer’ (p. 244) without ‘mature standards and interests’ (p. 132)." The last reference before this sentence, to Lyn Pykett, does not include such low page numbers. I added Leavis's book to the bibliography, so I could turn those page numbers into short refs to his book, if that is what they are. --Prairieplant (talk) 16:59, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Prairieplant these page do refer to The Great Tradition, the text of which is available online. However, I was using a secondary source, and will check the original. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwood128 (talk • contribs) 13:09 April 17, 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 the first one is on page 244, using the online copy. That copy shows original page numbers, very clever. F R Leavis says that phrase more than once about Dickens. The second quote is on page 132, a trait that Henry James displays, but which Dickens lacks, so I can set those up as short refs, and I will add the online book url in the Bibliography. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:18, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

First Archive of Talk page set up

/Archive 1 --Prairieplant (talk) 23:14, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Last translation

Rwood128 I did my last translation, and it is in my sandbox here. Again, I do not want to plop it in the article. My one idea is following Point of view. I will put it where you think most logical, given the title of Recapitulation of plot structure. I made some changes to the lead, too. You can undo them if they are repetitious. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:10, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 I know this is a holiday weekend, but I hope you have time soon to react to the Recapitulation translation. Is it worth putting in the article?

The other task for improving this article – My public library is getting me a copy of Paroissien's 2008/2011 book using inter-library loan, so I can check some of the references, and possibly improve those for Symbolism, using other articles in that book. --Prairieplant (talk) 03:34, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I'll try and find time Prairieplant shortly–and will complete the initial reception section. Rwood128 (talk) 10:37, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I see no reason not to add this. Rwood128 (talk) 22:39, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Minor comment by Robert Ferrieux

I would like to congratulate the contributors to this article for the brilliant use they have made of the French article. However, I wonder whether it would'nt be fair to acknowledge this debt (as we always do on this side of the channel) when we borrow from articles written in English or any other language. Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any relevant mention in the main article. With every good wish, --Robert Ferrieux (talk) 09:54, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Robert Ferrieux for the kind comments. I'm checking on how this is done. Rwood128 (talk) 12:19, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Robert Ferrieux, there is an acknowledgement at the beginning of this page, though it's small and I didn't notice it (below the heading banner, on the right). Also, when Prairieplant and I used translated material we acknowledged it in the edit summary. Hope that answers your query. Rwood128 (talk) 15:22, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

The small box on this Talk page is what English Wikipedia requests when we translate from another Wikipedia, on the talk page but not on the article page. That little box also shows at the bottom of the Talk page in Categories, that this is in the category of articles translated from French Wikipedia. Why the rules are that way, I could not say! Before we added the text, there was a flag on top of the article saying how much better this article would be with translations from the French article; now that the translations are here, that flag is removed. And as Rwood128 noted, each time we added the translated text, the Edit summary for the article (view history) stated that it was a translation from the article in French Wikipedia. --Prairieplant (talk) 15:58, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Getting brave, I put a comment on the Talk page in French Wikipedia, when I found that John O Jordan was mentioned in text where the name was really Gareth Cordery, based on the page numbers cited in the book by David Paroissien, a collection of great essays on Charles Dickens. And I see that you have modified the French article in the same way that I modified the English article, to cite Cordery in the text and in the inline citation. We have gained greatly from the French Wikipedia article, Robert Ferrieux. --Prairieplant (talk) 15:58, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Robert Ferrieux is that your book we cited in the article? I just looked at the edits you did. I did not know the book was available in both languages, French and English. Is the translation in the text adequate? I modified the language parameter to say French and English, though we used the version from French Wikipedia, so I presume the ISBN is for the book in French, not in English, c'est vrai ? --Prairieplant (talk) 15:45, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 Prairieplant
Fine. The book mentioned is a collective effort, but I wrote the greatest part of it. There is only one version, the one published in 2001 by Ellipses. The reason why I added 'en' to 'fr' is that if most chapters are in French, some, depending on the choice of authors, are in English. The reference to Georges Gusdorf comes from a chapter in French written by myself. The ISBN concerns the whole book. Many thanks for your compliments. I often use the English version as a basis before expatiating on it.
I love this kind of collabotation, often occult, but sometimes open and direct. Please let's keep in touch, we might be of some help to each other. May I ask you both to use my French talkpage (English is most welcome): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_utilisateur:Robert_Ferrieux. Best regards, --Robert Ferrieux (talk) 19:09, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

More citations fixed

It turns out that all the Paroissien citations attributed to Jordan were from the chapter by Gareth Cordery pp 369-379 in the book, so I added Cordery to the Books part of the Bibliography, changed the short form refs to his name, and year 2008 for the copy of the book in my hands, ISBN changed as well, and put Cordery's name where Jordan's was.

Next step with this book in hand, is to see if any author gives better source for something in Symbolism section, to replace the Spark Notes as a source.

An aside, Cordery states that only Forster knew that Dickens worked as a child, until Forster published the biography after Dickens died. Dickens parents never spoke of it, he never spoke of it, save to Forster (page 377, Cordery). Readers of the novel before the biography was published had no chance to know that he was telling the start of a story of his own. Is that worth mentioning to modern readers, that the first generations of readers did not know these events? --Prairieplant (talk) 07:11, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 Is there a URL for this ref in Literary Sig section? Paul Schlicke, David Copperfield: Reception", Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens'. Oxford University Press, 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780198662532 Published online: 2011 subscription needed.

The comment about "subscription needed" is relevant for a cite with a url. I will format it, and keep subscription needed in comment until there is a URL, okay? PS Congratulations on finding that source. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:06, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

My source is my University's library subscription, and cannot be quoted. This is what Google gives: . It's good to see you still working on this article. Rwood128 (talk) 10:36, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Okay, Rwood128, other people cannot see the text online and we need not use the subscription warning. I once saw an article using EBSCO at my local library, and used the via parameter. No one else could use the link, a similar situation. It seems enough to give the print information, a clear source. So that is how we leave it. I like this article; I have learned so much from the work on it. Will it reach B class or better? —Prairieplant (talk) 15:09, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes,Prairieplant it was v.good working with you on this article. It may well be a B, but the reviewing process work poorly, from my experience. I asked for the article Alley to be assessed 5 years ago. I suspect that most attention is paid to articles put forward for an A category. It would be very useful to know how it might be improved.

I shouldn't, of course, have assessed this article because of my involvement as an editor, but it seemed so obvious (commonsense) that it was at least a C. Rwood128 (talk) 17:48, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

I have asked for it to be re-assessed . Rwood128 (talk) 18:01, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Rwood128 It was reviewed and given a B. More work and it could be Good or Featured, comments at the link you posted at Requesting an Assessment. Thank you for asking! --Prairieplant (talk) 08:26, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Peggotty's boat house

Prairieplant, re recent edits, see the following, from the article (the final paragraph):

One puzzling mismatch between the text and accompanying illustrations is that of the Peggotty family's boat-house "cottage" on the Yarmouth sands (pictured). It is clear from the text that the author envisaged the house as an upright boat, whereas the illustrator depicted it as an upturned hull resting on the beach with holes cut for the doors and windows. Interior illustrations of the cottage also show it as a room with curved ceiling beams implying an upturned hull. Although Dickens seemed to have had the opportunity to correct this discrepancy he never did, suggesting that he was happy with the illustrator's depiction.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwood128 (talk • contribs) 15:53 June 5, 2020 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. --Prairieplant (talk) 22:12, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

References