A Memoir of the Duke of Wellington

A biography of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (May 1, 1769–September 14, 1852)—published originally in 1853 shortly after its illustrious subject’s death—concentrating primarily on his brilliant military career but with one final chapter recounting his political career (twice serving as Prime Minister) and final days.  There are, in addition to the sketch used on the eBook cover, five other illustrations by Sir John Gilbert, nicknamed during his lifetime “the Scott of painting.”

While detailing the inexplicably underrated military brilliance of Wellington, the author at the same time unavoidably exposes, by contrast, the surprising ineptitude of the French generals Wellington confronted, including Napoleon himself, whom historians have generally flattered for their supposed military genius.  So this is probably not a book French partisans and Napoleon fans will enjoy.  But as an Englishman would likely ask, “How many times does the same guy have to beat you before you admit he’s better?”

Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing.  We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison.  Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book.  While remaining faithful to a writer’s original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes.  If the printer became distracted after placing an ‘a’ at the end of a line and then placed another ‘a’ at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too?  Not us.  That’s why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.