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JANUARY’S FEATURED TEXT

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"The Corsair" is an 1814 tale in verse by George Gordon Byron.

It is about a privateer named Conrad, who is rejected by society as a young man because of his actions, and who later fights against mankind, although not against women. The tale is divided into three cantos.

January 2014 is the bicentennial of the publication of this work.

"O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
"Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
"Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
"Survey our empire and behold our home!
"These are our realms, no limits to their sway—
"Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.
"Ours the wild life in tumult still to range
"From toil to rest, and joy in every change.
"Oh, who can tell? not thou, luxurious slave!
"Whose soul would sicken o'er the heaving wave;
"Not thou, vain lord of wantonness and ease!
"Whom slumber soothes not—pleasure cannot please—
"Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,
"And danc’d in triumph o'er the waters wide,
"The exulting sense—the pulse's maddening play,
"That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way?

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CURRENT COLLABORATIONS

The current Community collaboration is collecting texts related to WikiProject NARA Recent collaborations: Tenth Anniversary Contest, Disney, Domesday survey, Niccolò Machiavelli

The current Proofread of the Month is Correspondence between the Warden of St Columba's College and the Primate of Armagh  (1853) by George Williams and John George de la Poer Beresford. Recent collaborations: Handbook of Maritime Rights, Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland, The First Report of the Lichfield Society, The Truth about the Transvaal, The Coffee Publichouse, Notes on the Present and Future of the Archaeological Collections of the University of Oxford, Remarks on Some Late Decisions Respecting the Colonial Church, Canterbury Papers, On the Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom, Why the Shoe Pinches, Navvies and Their Needs, Weather Facts and Predictions, How to Play Chess, Indoor and Outdoor Gymnastic Games, Association Football and How to Play It, Stabilizing the Dollar, First Voyage Round the World, Pride and Prejudice, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, Marriage as a Trade, New Elements of Geography, Balthasar Hübmaier, Natural History, Birds,

The current Maintenance of the Month task is Author page connection with Wikidata items Recent collaborations: Help page improvement, Undated works, Move to the Translation namespace, Portal classification review, Works with no copyright tag

NEW TEXTS

Travelling Companions (1919)
 by Henry James
Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland (1882)
 by Arthur Ranken
Kidnapped in London (1897)
 by Sun Yat-sen
Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect (1879)
 by William Barnes
Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887)
 by Andrew Lang
A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698)
 by Jeremy Collier
Notes on the Present and Future of the Archaeological Collections of the University of Oxford (1881)
 by Greville John Chester

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