I’ve been working on a collection of short biographies of radical figures, sort of an introductory miscellany, and had been translating Elisée Reclus’ “John Brown” to include there. Gallica has a rough, but readable scan of what appears to be a pamphlet version of the text. Now that I’ve translated it, it also appears to be an incomplete version. Some text, probably at least a few lines, is pretty clearly missing. Brown’s capture, trial and death seem to have disappeared between one line and the next. This looks like an “original” error, rather than a recent scanning error. It’s still unfortunate. And I can’t seem to track the original down: “John Brown.” La Cooperation. 14 July 1867. I anyone has access to that journal, I would love to complete the translation work.
Of course, the problem of missing bits and pieces is a fairly common one. Voltairine de Cleyre’s translation of Jean Grave’s Moribund Society and Anarchy is one of those texts that are mostly available online, but have unreadable pages in the scans. One of these days, we’ll be able to get all this stuff available in complete form.
