Chapter XXVII: Introduction

Welcome to Project Gutenberg?s edition of Madame Claire, a novel by Susan Ertz.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Susan Ertz published over twenty works in a career spanning six decades. She was born February 13, 1887 and died on April 11, 1985. Madame Claire was her first novel.

THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG VERSION.

This production of the book is based on the first American edition of the novel, published in 1923, by D. Appleton and Company. The source is the scanned copy of the Library of Congress from the Internet Archives.

DETAILED NOTES.

One major issue in the transcription of this book is the rendering of words hyphenated and split between two lines for spacing. For most cases, words were silently rejoined based on other uses of the word in this novel. Cases where there are few or no other uses of the word are detailed in the Hyphenated Words section of these Detailed Notes. I used Google's Ngram viewer when the book had no template. There were a few cases where I'd love to check the author's other novels for templates but her other works are not digitized. Any other issues in rejoining these words may also be found in the Hyphenated Words section.

Other issues that have come up in transcribing the book are listed in the Emendations and Issues section of these Detailed Notes.

EMENDATIONS AND ISSUES.

On Page 89 and Page 211, there is a space between an em-dash and the beginning of the next sentence on the printed page. These spaces were removed.

Page 2 The novel uses sitting-room here but four other times uses sitting room. The novel also uses dining-room on Page 28, but later has three uses of dining room. In both cases, the spelling as the novel had it was retained.

Page 58 and Page 141 use well-known and well known, respectively, but the usage in both cases follows current styling guidelines. The Chicago Manual of Style cites the following grammatical rule: use a hyphen to join two or more words serving as a single adjective before a noun, but not when those two words come after a noun. The AP Style Guide has a more complex rule that hyphenates the words after the noun if the adjectives appear after a form of to be. In the first sentence, by a well-known firm of decorators, well-known is a single adjective before a noun. In the second sentence, His father, Graham Crosby, an explorer well known to geographical societies, well known is a single adjective after the noun explorer, not followed by a verb form of to be.

Page iii On the original title page, the city of Publication and the year of Publication were on the same line. Because of a technical issue associated with maintaining that structure, the city and year are displayed on separate lines and the text centered, much like the presentation of this publisher information on the title page of many of our other books.

Page v Added Table of Contents. This table of contents page replaces a simple page with the title of the novel printed on it.

Page 27, Page 149. As the complimentary closing of all other letters was italicized, the complimentary closings for these two letters were italicized too. These were Stephen's second letter in Chapter 3 and Claire's reply to another of Stephen's letters in Chapter 13.

On Page 172, the closing signatures of Stephen's letter was printed on the last line of the letter in the book and right justified. On Page 265, the complimentary closing and closing signature were printed on the last line of the letter and right justified. Both presentations were standardized.

Page 53 Titanic in Stephen's letter is in quotes, while Titanic on Page 153 is italicized.

Who's Who is a reference work on contemporary prominent people in Britain published annually since 1849. I removed the question mark after Who's Who? in the citation on Page 240. No change was made to the citation on Page 75.

Page 165 Correct spelling of trying in this sentence: If I say anything she will only tell me I am tryng to rob her of her happiness.

Page 187 Change Is to It in the sentence: Is isn't as though the children were growing up;

Page 222 Add a left quote before Mr. Robinson of Denver.'

Page 229 Remove right double quote after Mr. Colebridge nearly always joins us."

Page 241 Change pore to poor in the sentence: there aren't too many things going for a pore cripple.

On Page 256 Madame Claire says sha'n't while on Page 294 Chip says shan't.

Page 263 Remove the double right quote after me in the following sentence: I feel that life is just beginning for me. The standard in this book for letters with a closing address is to defer the trailing right quote until after the closing signature.

Page 274 Change single right quote to a double right quote in the following sentence: "Didn't I understand Judy to say that the theater was one of them?'

Page 277 Change prefectly to perfectly in the sentence: "are you prefectly well again?

Page 283 Change the double right closing quote after Andrew Crobsy's signature to a closing single right quote. Judy's narration continues after the end of the letter.

In the Novels promotional page, the book's practice of putting both publishing cities on the same line were retained.

The cover image was created by the transcriber and it is placed in the public domain.

HYPHENATED WORDS.

Page 3 lifelong, see Page 82.

Page 10 self-restraint.

Page 11 eye-witness.

Page 28 photograph, see Page 77.

Page 44 overshadowed.

Page 53 bath-chair, see Page 213 and Page 219.

Page 62 barbed-wire entanglements, see Page 61.

Page 67 notebook. Another word with the same suffix, picture-book on Page 138, was unsuitable as a template for notebook.

Page 71 hard-bitten.

Page 76 forbore.

Page 82 nakedness, see Page 106.

Page 87 meddlesome.

Page 104 warfare.

Page 135 stiffness.

Page 139 schoolgirl, see Page 256.

Page 148 hilltop, see Page 7.

Page 160 waist-coat.

Page 173 dressmaker.

Page 183 household, see Page 097.

Page 204 between-maid.

Page 220 over-ripeness.

Page 237 unChristian.

Page 246 primroses.

Page 252 hereafter, see Page 48.

Page 257 doorway, see Page 199.

Page 288 nickname.