Memoirs and portraits of one hundred Glasgow men

Background

Alan Dawson

alan.dawson@strath.ac.uk

November 2005

The original book by James MacLehose entitled "Memoirs and portraits of one hundred Glasgow men who have died during the last thirty years and in their lives did much to make the city what it now is" was published in two volumes in 1886 as a limited edition of 400 copies. Digitisation of all 524 pages was carried out at the Centre for Digital Library Research in agreement with Glasgow University Library and Strathclyde University Library, both of whom hold copies of the book.

The printed book

This book was described by the author as an account of men who

"have given life and light and learning to their city: their genius and skill, their enterprise and daring made it famous, and, combined with their wealth and their worth, have made Glasgow the second city in the empire."

The aim was to tell the story of their lives, what they did, and how they did it. It was decided that no man living at the time of publication should be included, and that the men chosen should all have died in the thirty years 1855-1885, a period which would practically cover local history from the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was thought that everything would be included that was necessary to make the book representative of the various interests of the city of Glasgow.

The portraits were all engraved specially for this work. The pictures from which they were taken were provided by representatives of the respective families. Photographs were considered but rejected on the grounds that they were apt to fade and sometimes vanish. The portraits were engraved by a new process at the time, first on copper, then faced and finished on steel, and then printed from the steel plate.

The electronic book

This ebook was created at the Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde, as part of research into automated ebook creation and indexing. The structure and order of the digitised version of the book is almost exactly as in the printed volumes, including the preface and introduction, the portraits accompanying each individual, the chapter about MacLehose himself, and the list of subscribers. Similarly, the text from the source volumes has been retained exactly as it appeared in the printed volumes, with all the original spellings, place names, quotes and quotation marks. Bold or italic emphasis are not used as neither appear in the original.

The only significant variations from the printed book are the summaries and the index. The summaries of each chapter do not appear in the source material but have been written specially for the digital version, and are based solely on the text of each chapter, with no attempt at verification from other sources.

The index does appear in the printed book, but its references to page numbers have been converted to live links to the relevant section of individual chapters. Furthermore, each index entry has been assigned to one of several categories, including people, organisations, places, events and topics. The online index therefore provides a valuable additional indication of the contents of the book as a whole, as well as an alternative method of browsing it. A small number of additional index entries have been added, to help highlight topics likely to be of current or historical interest.