Wait a minute! What is Eaton’s? Who is Eaton? For those of us that are not Canadian or don’t know much about history of Canada, those are the first questions we must answer. At least, this was my case.
Thanks to Wikipedia, now I know Timothy Eaton founded Eaton’s in 1869 in Toronto, Eaton’s became was once Canada’s largest deparment store retailer and its catalogue was found in the homes of most Canadians.
Once I laid the groundwork, I chose my books from the Eaton’s Fall and Winter catalogue from 1913-14. I wish I could have got a pic of the cover, but I did not find it either Archive.org or Google Books, or Hathi Trust or Gutenberg Project. Or Google Images. There are many others Eaton’s catalogue but not just the Fall and Winter from 1913-14, number 108.
My books were selected from Books for young people section.
I tried to search for old but quality editions. There they go:
1) The illustrated natural history, John George Wood
Fig.01 Wood's illustrated natural history
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Google Books
Overview | Full-text
Hathi Trust
Overview | Full-text
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2) Robinson Crusoe, Danie Defoe
Fig.02 Robinson Crusoe
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Google Books
Overview | Full-text
Gutenberg Project
Overview | Full-text
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3) Through the looking glass and what Alice found there, Lewis Carrol
Fig.03 Through the looking glass and what Alice found there
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Google Books
Overview | Full-text
Hathi Trust
Overview | Full-text
Gutenberg Project
Overview | Full-tex
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4) Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Andersen
Fig.04 Andersen's Fairy tales
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Google Books
Overview | Full-text
Hathi Trust
Overview | Full-text
Gutenberg Project
Overview | Full-tex
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5) Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol
Fig.05 Alice's adventures in Wonderland
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Google Books
Overview | Full-text
Hathi Trust
Overview | Full-text
Gutenberg Project
Overview | Full-tex
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6) Black beauty, Anna Sewell
Fig.06 Black beauty
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Google Books
Overview | Full-text
Hathi Trust
Overview | Full-text
Gutenberg Project
Overview | Full-tex
7) A child’s garden of verses, Robert Louis Stevenson
Fig.07 A child's garden of verses
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Google Books
Overview | Full-text
Hathi Trust
Overview | Full-text
Gutenberg Project
Overview | Full-tex
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8 ) Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
Fig.08 Gulliver's travels
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Google Books
Overview | Full-text
Hathi Trust
Overview | Full-text
Gutenberg Project
Overview | Full-tex
9) Mother Goose’s rhymes jingles and fairy tales
Fig.09 Mother Goose's rhymes jingles and fairy tales
University of Florida, Digital Collections
Overview | Full-text
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10) A child’s story of the Bible, Mary Artemisia Lathbury
Fig.10 A child's story of the Bible
Archive.org
Overview | Full-text
Gutenberg Project
Overview | Full-tex
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11) A child’s life of Christ, Mary Artemisia Lathbury
Fig.11 A child's life of Christ
Archive.org
Overview |Full-text
Hathi Trust
Overview | Full-text
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12) Animal stories for little people, James Hartwell
Fig.12 Animal stories for little people
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During this search, I drew some conclusions:
It’s amazing that there are lots of old books, digitized and free. Although, on the other hand, it’s strange the issue of copyright: some editions have free full-text, however, others editions of the same book have copyright.
There are some interesting features in this websites. For example, Both Archive.org and Hathi Trust allow to sort by date. Hathi Trust also let you search only full view books.
Urls are other curious point. Gutenberg Project have very simple urls as long as Google Books have extremly complex and long ones (even its permalinks).
These four sites are basic to look for digitized content. If your search doesn’t success here, it rarely will success on other sites. There were two books I could not find here: Mother Goose’s rhymes jingles and fairy tales (that I found in the Digital Collection of the University of Florida) and Animal stories for little people (in sale on Amazon and eBay).
It was impossible to find out the author of Mother Goose’s rhymes jingles and fairy tales.
Some overviews include a QR-code of the books.
The first time I heard of these project was in a Digital History class but now it’s the first time I use them. I’m delighted. They are carrying out a hard work but it is worth. I will browse them for future researches for sure!
2011: A Digital Odyssey 