Welcome to Celtnet 'One Million People' — This, unashamedly, is a drive to get as many people to help this site as possible. Over the years I have transscribed a number of books (mostly Middle Welsh and Recipes) and I have made the full texts, translations and modern recactions (for recipes) available on this site, completely free. But I am only one person, doing this in my spare time and there are hundreds of books out there that need to be made availabe. So, I am going to ask you for 1 of 4 things from you:

1. A donation of $1 made via PayPal:

2. A donation of 50c made via PayPal:

3. A link back to this page: <a href="http://www.celtnet.org.uk/info/one-million-people.php">One Million People</a> Making ancient books available to all.

4. If you have an old book, then consider making it available to this site, either by donation, by scanning it or by digitizing and copying yourself (any such donations will of course be acknowleged).

Just to show what has been done already, here are the ancient and historic books that have already been put up on this site:

Cookery books:

Apicius' De Re Coquinaria (4th Century)	The Forme of Cury (1390)	Proper New Book of Cookery (1545)
Delightes for Ladies (1602)	W. M. — The Compleat Cook (1658)	Hannah Wolley — The Queen-like Closet (1670)
Hannah Glasse — The Art of Cookery (1747)	Eliza Acton — Modern Cookery (1845)	Alexis Soyer — The Modern Housewife or Ménagère (1849)
Francatelli — Cook's Guide (1851)	Eliza Acton — English Bread Book (1851)	Alexis Soyer — A Shilling Cookery Book for the People (1854)
Mrs Beeton — Book of Household Management (1861)

Ancient Welsh Texts

The Red Book of Hergest
The Black Book of Carmarthen
The Book of Taliesin

Historically Accurate Fonts

Because I like to show the texts of these books as close to the original orthography and appearance as possible, I have been busy creating and modifying fonts to display all the characters and nuances of the original. Before the the deveopment of Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg's moveabley press around 1439 all books were hand written and hand-illuminated. For these texts I have my own Medieval font based on the writings of the scribes of the Medieval Welsh text, the Red Book of Hergest, this font being Mabinogi Celtic. Tudor texts (from the reign of Henry VIIIth to Elizabeth Ist are represented in a Gothic-style typeface, Old London, addapted from an existing typeface specifically for this site. Texts from 1620 to 1720 (essentually the Stuart period) are represented in another font face, Fell Roman, specifically deisgned for this site and based on the fonts of Dr John Fell, Bishop of Oxford during the seventeenth century who donated his fonts to the University of Oxford.

Eighteenth century texts are presented in another new font face for this site, Wyld-18c. This is a Caslon style font that was used to typeset The Practical Surveyor, by Samuel Wyld, published in London in 1725. It should be noted that all American and English printing from 1735 to 1800 was done using the Caslon font, created by William Caslon (1692-1766), sometime around 1722. Another font appropriate for this era would be Baskerville Old Face which was introduced by Issaac Moore in 1768, based on the fonts of John Baskerville.

Personally I think that Victorian-era fonts are rather ugly and I am still working on a font from that period that will keep the 'look and feel' of the original published works but being a little kinder to the eyes of modern readers.

This means that this site uses four fonts, three of which are unique and one which has been completely re-designed. That is a lot of work, as each individual character in the font has to be designed and drawn before beig digitized, having accents added and then aligned with other characters in the font so it looks good on screen. The smallest font has 270 characters and the largest well over 1000. That is a lot of work, and all this is being provided to everyone for free so I would be grateful if you would help support this site, so that I can keep on doing what I do here for everyone.

Why am I doing this? Well, I really want to make ancient culinary literature available to all, and old recipes fascinate me.

Why am I asking for only $1 or 50c? Well, I want everyone who comes to this site to want to and to be able to donate. But surely it won't make a difference? I hear you ask. Well... This site gets a minimum o 4000 visitors each and every day. Most people will ignore this appeal, but if only 1 in 10 donate 50c that's $200 a day, $1400 a week. That's enough to source a number of ancient books or to keep the site running for a few more months (and to give me the incentive to work a little harder on making more texts available).

This is the real power of the internet. Each individual only gives a little, but collectively the amount is huge.

What's in if for me? Yes, I can hear you asking that. Well, if you want you get your name here in lights. And that's another reason for calling this 1,000,000 people. I want to personally thank anyone and everyone who takes the time and effort to help. If you donate then you will get your name listed here. I have set-up a database and you can add a little biography of yourself there. This will be linked from your name on this page. If you have a website then you can add a link to that website and it's completely free. Even if you just link to this page from your site you will still get your name here.

Yes, a 50c or $1 donation to this cause is all you need to get your website permanently linked from this page. It's my 'thank you' for your donation and time. Now, I can't say any fairer than that, can I? To donate simply click on the: As soon as you've made you will automatically be re-directed to the information entry page where you can submit your details to be listed on this and subsequent pages.

If you have donated 50c you get a naked link. If you have donated $1 or more you can define your own link text.
If you have added a link to this page send an email with your Name, a short (500 character) biography, the page where you added our link to and your URL to me at admin @ celtnet.org.uk . Please note, if you only link to this site but do not donate, your URL will be displayed, but it will not be hyperlinked.