Warning! If you're accessing this via a normal phone line, the main two parts will probably take a while to download (estimates if you're using a 56kbps modem: first part, 5 minutes; second part, 90 seconds). This is mainly due to the graphics; so you might want to switch off auto-loading of images.
If you're having trouble downloading the first part, this might be because it is rather large. I've split it into four smaller parts, which might help:
The text of this version was extracted from the Library of Congress' SGML version, and the plates are based on their facsimiles of both Essex (1728) and Rameau (1748). (Note: the images on their site are of much higher quality, you can view them by clicking on the images here, then choosing their "Access bitonal" option).
In addition, the Library of Congress has a version of the full text, but I also have a plain-text version, which might be more convenient (also zipped and gzipped).
Downloads
If you want to download a version to keep on your hard-drive, get one or both of...
If you want to refer to the original I've provided links to the facsimile version from chapter headings and plates. I've also provided page number anchors of the form ...#s1 and ...#p1 for scanned page number and marked number respectively. There are also numbers in the alt-texts of graphics – these pages references refer to the scanned page in the facsimile (you can get to them by editing the URL) I've also added the written page number in brackets to the alt-texts, in case that's more useful. Sorry if this is awkward, but I didn't want to cover the thing in editorial comments.
I've provided links to notated dances referred to in the text but these might be wrong! They're only based on the name of the dance, and no other evidence, so you might not want to trust them. If anyone can confirm or correct these assumptions, it would be nice to know. Also, there's an "extra" plate in the Rameau, which appears in part 1, chapter 20, but which is captioned Figure preste à faire le tems de Couráte, and not referred to in the text. I left it out of this version.
Changes
6th February 2004: Very minor – added comment to source noting that "Lewis the Fourteeth" is a typo in the original.
19th October 2003: Better XHTML standards compliance. Added CSS background-color:black for hr elements.
7th March 2003: Corrected typo: Part 1, Ch XXXVIII, para 3: "so sirm" –> "so firm".
29th November 2002: Added more formatting to essex.css – floating first letters, justified text, fixed visted links hover highlight. Correction – French Preface para 12: Magnisicence –> Magnificence.
12th August 2002: Edited essex.css source file, to make it more human-readable.
6th August 2002: Changed an "f" to a long-s in Part 2, Chapter 8, para 9, "fort".
1st April 2002: Changed format of links to facsimile, so that the LoC site provides a link to the bibliographic information.
24th March 2002: Possibly some other changes here, but I lost the list of changes.
3rd Oct 2001: Typo in Book 1, chapter XXI: "with will bring" –> "which will bring".
12th May 2001: Rearranged some code on the contents page, to avoid a couple of spurious line breaks in Netscape 6.
14th March 2001: Removed font specification from style-sheet, because it made Netscape 4.x render the page in a very small font.
14th Feb 2001: Added markup to Part 2 to distinguish a long "s" from an "f". Changed these long "s"es to look like modern "s"es (but they are still marked as different in the HTML code). If you don't like this, you can download and change it – either by search&replace on "<span class="s">s</span>" or by manipulating the essex.css file.
11th Feb 2001: Correction to Part 1, ch 42, para 6: "ftraight" rather than "ftraigt". Added markup to front, contents, and part 1 to distinguish a long "s" from an "f". No visible change will be apparent.
3nd Dec 2000: Compressed plates Essex 108,111,147,Rameau122 down to 6 colours, and compressed Rameau135,136 to 5 colours. This has changed the colour balance of these plates, but I think the new versions are cleaner. Compressing down to 4 made the graphics rather grainy, so I'll leave them as they are.
19th Nov 2000: Typos in Preface: Para 6 "Moufieur"–>"Monfieur", Para 9 "Englifh" italicised. Added space before question/exclamation marks. Headings and possibly plate borders are now black, but clicking on them still takes you to the facsimile (recolouring will only be visible if your browser supports css).
15th Nov 2000: Typos in Part 2: Chap 12, para 6 "efforts"–>"Efforts"; Chap 13, para 2 "final"–>"fmall"; Chap 15, para 2 "from" italicised; Chap 16 "attitude"–>"Attitude" in captions; Chap 17 "owing no to" –>"owing to", "make made"–>"make"; Chap 18, para 1 "brifk"–>"brisk". Also, in Part 1: Chap 10 caption "First motion"–>"first Motion". Added some widespace markup using css.
11th Nov 2000: Added class markup from italic areas and marked smallcaps (but not used it because Netscape can't handle it).
5th Nov 2000: Added class markup for wide-spaced "CHAP". This will only work if your browser supports style-sheets (so it should work in the latest versions of Mozilla, Opera and Internet Explorer; and won't work in Netscape 4.x or Lynx).
...old stuff snipped.
To do:
Check colours of plates on a decent monitor,
Add class-markup for first word,
Remove markup to work around CSS shortcomings (far future).