  Feature Archive |
Featured Online Exhibits
April, 1999
Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe OnlineFern Canyon Press
Although they make allusions to being publishers, the online site for Fern Canyon Press seems to be aimed at retailing books over the Net. They generally specialize in 3 areas: pirate history, history of the wild west, and what can only be described as miscellaneous.
They are nice enough to put a fairly substantial amount of stuff online to browse through, including some articles and the full text of at least 4 books - including Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Both of these include what appears to be a complete set of color illustrations by the great N.C. Wyeth.
The illustrations are well-scanned, and they're big - on my monitor they display larger than actual size. This always my biggest concern about art online, and Fern Canyon Press has done a much better job than I expected.
The artwork also makes the texts much more interesting. I have always liked the idea of having the full, searchable text of great works online, but unadorned ASCII text is dull and hard to read for any length. The only suggestion for improvement I would make is to integrate the illustrations with the text, rather than having them on separate pages. The full scans are far too big to wrap text around, but at least a medium-sized thumbnail would break up the visual monotony a bit.
Check out their site when you want to read about the outlaws of the Old West or the High Seas.
P.S. FCP doesn't sell these 2 books on their site, but if you go to our N.C. Wyeth page, you'll find them, along with The Yearling, The Last of the Mohicans, The Boy's King Arthur, and many more classics. Buy them all for your child or your grandchild (or for yourself).
