The Raleigh Rainbows – English Key For Gregg Shorthand Book

This is an English key for The Raleigh Rainbows, which was published in Gregg Shorthand in February 1928. A careful search through the copyright database revealed that the copyright was NOT renewed on this shorthand book during the 28th year after publication. Books published in the U.S. from 1923 through 1963 required a copyright renewal during the 28th year after publication to avoid falling into the public domain on January 1st of the 29th year. The Gregg Shorthand Raleigh Rainbows book entered the public domain on January 1, 1957.

This is an original translation that was recently created. An English key was never published.

The Raleigh Rainbows, written in Gregg Shorthand, is a rare book. It is probably the rarest of all of the Gregg Shorthand novels because it was only in print for 3 years.

Raleigh Rainbows was designed to be used by a new Gregg Shorthand student who had just started using the 1916 Gregg Shorthand Manual. Raleigh Rainbows has one chapter for each of the 20 chapters in the 1916 Gregg Manual. The vocabulary and words in each Raleigh Rainbows chapter cannot go beyond what the student has learned in the same chapter in the 1916 Gregg Manual. So the early chapters are very limited and short. The later chapters are more complex as the reader learns more shorthand techniques from the 1916 Gregg Manual. The story seems strange when read in English because of the shorthand vocabulary limitations through much of this book.

As this book was meant to be used with the 1916 Gregg Manual, it was only around for a 3 years. This book was published in February 1928, but it became obsolete when the Gregg Shorthand Anniversary Manual was published in May 1929. Raleigh Rainbows stayed in the Gregg Publishing Catalog until 1931. It was never revised for Gregg Anniversary shorthand. It made no sense to keep this book around, because the chapters and shorthand did not match the greatly revised Anniversary Manual.

The story is about a small group of friends who live in Raleigh Ridge. The characters are described in English text at the beginning of the book. They have just graduated from High School. The English text introduces these students. There is a short scene written in English where the students are starting their first day in a Gregg Shorthand College Class. Then the rest of the book is in Gregg Shorthand, as these fictional students learn Shorthand from scratch. Raleigh Rainbows is the club name for the group of students in this book.

You would do well if you had a copy of the 1916 Gregg Shorthand Manual handy while reading this.

Attachment: RaleighRainbowsEnglishKeyV7.pdf

(by Paul for
group greggshorthand)

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6 comments Add yours
  1. Paul, thank you so much for this. It will be a great resource. I definitely plan on reading the whole book!

    Regarding your observation about the often poor proportions of the outlines—is it just me, or is this rather common in pre-Anni material? It seems that the overall quality of the outlines in pre-Anni texts left something to be desired, not always but quite often. Perhaps we just got spoiled by Mrs. Richmond. 🙂

  2. I created this English Key myself. It wasn't easy. There a few things in there I couldn't make sense out of. The English text is awkward. The original Raleigh Rainbows shorthand book was not proofread. There are a lot of missing or misplaced quotes and paragraph marks.

    Here is my opinion about the quality of shorthand plates. I have read all of the Pre-Anniversary and Anniversary novels.
    –Most of the early Pre-Anniversary novels based on the 1902 Pre-Anniversary manual were probably written by John Gregg and they are very sloppy. There are many proportion problems. Also, the plates are faded. The pages and shorthand are very small. Sign of the Four has a lot of proportion problems. Those plates are by Alice Rinne Hagar.
    –1916 Gregg Shorthand Manual novels vary. The worst ones have plates by Harriet Johnson. The shorthand is pretty, but there are many proportion problems. The later work by Georgie Gregg is excellent. Alice in Wonderland has great plates. The plates and shorthand are small for most of these books.
    –1929 Gregg Shorthand Manual novels were mostly done by Winifred Kenna Richmond. They are all excellent as far as neatness and proportions. Also, they started making larger shorthand plates with Anniversary shorthand.

  3. Awesome job, Paul. My understanding is not that the plates were larger per se in the Anniversary series, but that the size in the plates of the earlier series was further reduced for printing: the actual plates were the same size as Anniversary, but they rendered them much smaller for printing. That's why the Anniversary plates look so much bigger (even though that's the real size).

  4. Another great plate writer was Mrs. Astrid Ramsey, who had a similar style to Mrs. Richmond. While she wrote many of the instruction books, and the plates for The Gregg Writer, as well as Today's Secretary in its early days. Her son, Mr. Donald Ramsey, posted a couple of times on the blog, and owns a bookstore in MD, last I heard.

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