Rare Gregg Writer Vol 2 on Google Books

Google Books recently scanned most of Gregg Writer Volume 2 from the Harvard library collection. The scan includes October 1899. It also includes February through September 1900. November, December, and January are missing from the Harvard collection and were not scanned. (For Volume 2, the magazine ran from October 1899 through September 1900.)

Google Books Originally posted this scan as snippet-view only. I emailed the Library Project and asked why a magazine from 1899 through 1900 could not be downloaded. It is obviously in the public domain. After a month, they emailed me and told me that they opened it up for full download. I have included the link at the bottom of this post.

I have also included the link for Gregg Writer Volume 2, October and November 1899, from The Louis A. Leslie collection. (This scan also includes issues from Volume 3.)

If you put relevant pages from both of these scans together, you will have the full volume, except for December 1899 and January 1900.  For the October 1899 issue, I recommend the pages from the Leslie collection, which are scanned in color.

These issues include very crude shorthand plates, which mostly consist of business letters.

There are a few interesting items in English:
—Page 16. An article about a stenographer who was poisoned to death by a typewriter ink ribbon.
—Page 70. An article about the fire that destroyed the Gregg school offices in Chicago in January 1900.

Here are the Gregg Writer Vol 2 links:

Google Books link to Gregg Writer Vol 2, October 1899 & February-September 1900:

https://books.google.com/books?id=guNDXraeNgQC

Louis A . Leslie Collection Link to Gregg Writer Vol 2, October & November 1899:

https://cdm15457.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15457coll1/id/329/rec/5


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11 comments Add yours
  1. Hello,
    I never know what to do with these books.google.com links… There’s no access to an inline version, isn’t it?
    Very varied subjects in the second link… (I had a look at the Louis A. Leslie Collection: many novels in Greg)

    As a pre-Anniversary practicing, you’re quite priviliged…
    🙂

  2. The plates may look crude but they are very legible. Realize that a standard for artistic penmanship did not exist in those days. It wasn't until the publication penmanship drills in The Gregg Writer, which were later published in book form as Practical Drills in Shorthand Penmanship in 1909, that penmanship standards were established.

  3. Is the downloading of public domain PDF files for Google Books unavailable outside of the United States? I’m hearing that some people are not able to see the links to PDF downloads that are available in the US. 

    1. Google decides what to do depending on the country. According to the Google Books FAQ:

      How do you determine if a book is in the public domain and therefore out of copyright?

      For users in the U.S., Google Books currently treats all books published after 1922 as protected by copyright, except for books to which no copyright was ever attached, such as books authored by the U.S. government. For users outside the U.S., we make determinations based on appropriate local law. As with all of our decisions related to the Google Books content, we're conservative in our reading of both copyright law and the known facts surrounding a particular book. If we don't know for sure, you'll see the Snippet View which, like a card catalog, shows you information about the book plus a few snippets – a few sentences of your search term in context.

      I wonder if archive.org has the same restriction.

  4. I love the old advertisements in these old magazines. I'm especially interested in the ink making pen. I wish they still made those!

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