The Susan Allibone Project – I need your help!

This idea started when my son, his friend, and I went to visit their high school Literature teacher who taught at our homeschool co-op. Mrs. E has a deep, extensive knowledge of English Literature and teaches American, British, and Classic Lit, along with Shakespeare, and Old and New Testament Survey. But after almost 30 years of teaching, she is moving toward retirement. (As part of her retirement project, she’s uploading all her classes and lessons for FREE online, which is an incredible gift! If you are homeschooling late middle school and/or high school and want to work through AMAZING literature curriculum –where they read real, whole, living books– taught by a gifted teacher, visit Thelma’s Library to see her classes.)

How I found this book

Anyway, we went down to her place, about an hour away, to have lunch and visit with her. At one point I was browsing her amazing library full of literature books with her extensive notes inside, meaningful artifacts from her travels, and gifts from her students–including an amazing painting by a Brit Lit student that includes all the characters from the books they read. (Maybe someday we’ll go visit again and I’ll take pictures and share Mrs. E’s actual library in a blog post. Let me know if you’d be interested in that!)

ANYWAY, Mrs. E picked up an old hardback book that was falling apart and flipped through a few pages with me. She remarked how wonderful this memoir was, but the book needed to be rebound, and she didn’t know if even then she would be able to read it because of the mildew and brittle pages. But because it was highly recommended by her, it stuck in my mind. And because I’m sort of obsessed with old books, and old dead Christian writers, I came home and immediately looked it up.

There are a couple facsimile copies available on Amazon, but they were over $30 each, and I’m not crazy about those kinds of scanned books anyway. So I hunted around online and finally found a beat up and damaged hardback copy for under $20 from a small bookstore in Washington state. When it arrived, I used some book repair tape and taped it together so I could at least read it, carefully. But the problem with old, old books is… do I underline and write it in? Is that allowed? Especially in a book that is literally 167 years old??

[At the beginning of a new year, 1834.] “…I have commenced this year with an [sic] humble prayer, that I may have grace to go on from strength to strength; that every false refuge may be taken from me, whatever it may cost. ‘What I know not, teach Thou me,’ is the sincere prayer of my heart, and I feel an entire conviction that if there is now anything wrong in my heart–anything that keeps me from the enjoyment of perfect peace–as I doubt not there is, God, in His infinite mercy, will teach me this. And I believe this, not because I am not unworthy, ungrateful, ever erring, but because God has promised, ‘Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely,’ ‘Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find.'”

Susan Allibone

What is the project?

So, that brings me to this project. I was thinking… what if I re-typed and re-formatted this book to publish on Amazon? It is in the public domain, so there are no copyright restrictions. I can retype every single word and reformat it with wider spacing between lines (for underlines) and bigger margins for personal notes. (Because I want to take notes and interact with this memoir!) And I could even include some illustrations and artwork, maybe even some thoughts at the end of the chapters? I started thinking that this could be really fun!

“I am a mortal, and a very unstable one, too. Temptations, within and without, will assail me as long as I continue in this world of sin, and my most earnest prayer is that I may be endued with strength to resist them. My besetting sin is self-confidence, the greatest of all dangers. My most fervent prayer is, ‘Oh, save me from myself!'”

Susan Allibone

Where do you come in? I need your help group editing this book. I’m typing it as it is, since it has already been edited in 1856 before its original publishing. But as you know, typos can easily sneak in when re-typing anything (through instead of though, created instead of create, etc). I know that online there have been successfully group edited books in the past. One example is Andy Weir’s first book. He wrote it and released it chapter by chapter, and many helped him with fact checks and edits.

This book would be much simpler, but I still need other eyes to review it. My plan is that I will release each chapter, for free, probably on Google docs, and I’d need your help to read and find typos. As a bonus, you’d get the chapters for free to keep or print for your own personal enjoyment and edification. Then after the book finished with edits, I will format it with space for notes, some illustrations, and upload it on Amazon to be printed as a physical book. It would sell for significantly cheaper than what’s currently available and it’d be easily accessible for everyone throughout the world.

[After being confined to her room with severe sickness] “Give me grace to bless Thee for comfort and for suffering, for sorrow and for joy. Oh! inspire my heart with resignation to Thy will. Let not one murmuring thought escape my heart or lips. Let me rather, oh, my Father, bless Thee that Thou has deprived me of health, for it is, in truth, one of the greatest blessings Thou hast ever bestowed upon me.”

Susan Allibone

Why?

You guys, I’m only on chapter 7 of 26 and it has already impacted me deeply. I completely understand why her diary and letters were published in the first place. The struggles she had with chronic, debilitating pain and sickness must have been overwhelming (a few times she admits that herself and others were sure she was close to death, but she actually lived with it for over 20 years). Yet, she still praised God for the work he was doing in her through the pain (I have yet to come across a sentence where she prayed for the pain to end. She was always looking to Christ and His work in her because of, in spite of, and through the pain).

Also, her thoughts on prayer, repentance, forgiveness, and her own self-examination and habits are so refreshing to hear. Especially in our current generation of “no suffering or affliction is good” or “Why would God do this?” or “Being irritated? Being annoyed? That’s not sin.”

It is a beautiful and incredibly life changing book and I think it needs to be more widely read and accessible. But, like I said above, I can’t do it alone. If there are enough of us, we can do this! If you are interested, there’s no definite time commitment. I’m just asking that you read through when you can, let me know of any typos and that’s it. So what do you think? Are you in with me?

“There is not a day of my life in which I do things which I ought not, and leave undone things which I ought to do. I am often impatient of contradiction, –I am indolent and selfish–I very often forget to pray for those in whose conversion I ought to feel the deepest interest. I do scarcely anything in the cause of Christ. And when I am made sensible of these and other sins, I begin to think myself humble. I know that I am far worse than I even suspect.
“Yet none of these things need discourage me, for ‘the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,’ and yet I have not that simple faith that I ought to have in His merits. I am often not the least affected when I read and think of all that He has done and suffered for me. Lord, be merciful to me, a miserable sinner, who knows not her own sinfulness. Oh, be pleased to create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.”

Susan Allibone, Diary entry from 1834

If you are interested in being a part of this project, or have any questions, let me know in the comments below. It won’t be a huge commitment, but I figure it will be a year long project, but one full of incredible insight and blessing!

More details

• I’ll let you know when a new chapter is up online for you to review by writing a short blog post highlighting a few quotes or thoughts. The posts will have {The Susan Allibone Project} in the title.
• Each chapter will be typed out word for word and uploaded onto a Google doc online.
• The Google doc will allow you to offer suggestions and edits and will automatically save it for me. To edit you would need to have a Google account. (This is the easiest way I can think of to do this.)
• You can participate as much or as little as you like.
• After we’re all done, I’d love to add your name to the “many thanks to…” list in the front of the book.

Public Domain

For those of you who so kindly asked, here are the copyright laws as best I understand them. If any of you have any information that show otherwise, please send it my way. I understand a book to be in the public domain and out of copyright, and available to be reprinted and/or reused when it meets these criteria:

1. “In the US the duration of copyright of the work expires 70 years after the death of its author.” https://gatekeeperpress.com/reprinting-and-selling-public-domain-books/ This book’s compiler, Alfred Lee and Ms. Susan Allibone -the subject of the book- lived and died over 170 years ago.

2. “After a book (or any copyrighted work, such as music, or art) is in the public domain, it cannot be pulled back into copyright status by republication. You may, however, copy, translate, republish it, even add new material to create new works. The new work would become a work derived from the original.” https://publishlawyer.com/republishing-a-book-in-the-public-domain/
The scanned copies of the book currently available on Amazon do not have a new protected copyright status.

3. “Any book published prior to 1923 is available [in the public domain], as these works are automatically considered within the public domain.” https://hhslawyers.com/blog/public-domain-copyrighted-work-must-know/

4. And finally, Amazon direct publishing has their own rules for publishing this. They are: “A public domain book is one that is not covered by intellectual property rights or copyright, usually because the rights have expired. Once a book enters public domain, it can be reprinted and distributed without the need to get permission from the original author.

Our program allows the selling of content that is in the public domain; however, we may ask you to provide proof that the content you submitted is in the public domain. We may refuse public domain content that’s already available through our program or other retail sites. If a free version of a public domain title is available in our store, we will only publish a differentiated version. Differentiated works are original and must meet one or more of these requirements:

• Translated: Original translations
• Annotated: Original annotations (additional content like study guides, literary critiques, detailed biographies, or historical context)
• Illustrated: 10 or more original illustrations relevant to the book

Books that meet these requirements must include (Translated), (Annotated), or (Illustrated) in the title field. For example, “Pride and Prejudice (Annotated)” is acceptable; “Pride and Prejudice (with an Introduction by Tiffany Gordon)” is not. The product description must also include a summary of how the book is original in bullet point format at the beginning of the product description (maximum 80 characters).”
I will be reformatting, possibly adding questions to consider (study guide), and illustrating this version, so it will also meet their requirements.

So according to all I could find, it is legal to retype and reprint and republish this book for sale. Again, if any of you know differently, please let me know and cite your sources. Thank you so much for your care and assistance!