Originally, I planned to learn Esperanto in 1987 and got a copy of Teach Yourself Esperanto, but was too busy and didn't make time to do it. The following year, Alisa and I were on the road in California working for Mobile-Ed Productions doing astronomy assemblies at schools. Sometime around Thanksgiving I found a copy of Winni-la-Pu and bought it as a Christmas present for Phil. It reminded me that I was was supposed to be learning Esperanto, so when I was next at a used bookstore, I found a copy of Esperanto: A Grammar and Commentary. And that was what I ended up using to teach myself Esperanto. What a great book. Originally published in 1904, it went through four revisions, and was reprinted several times after the author's death in 1909. My copy is from 1939, but I know of at least one other printing from 1944. I still think it's the best book about Esperanto in the English language.
I've sent a note to the Esperanto Association of Britain. It isn't perfectly clear what the copyright is for the book -- it looks like it probably isn't in the public domain. I'm hoping they'll be willing to help us make sure the rights are unencumbered. They aren't selling the book anymore (and haven't for 40 or 50 years, as far as I can tell). In anticipation, I've gone ahead and started scanning it -- I've scanned a bit more than half of it today. Bill Patterson and Robert Read are ready to help me convert it to text files and get it started at Project Gutenberg, where it will be need to proofread and formatted. But, with any luck, in a few weeks or month, Cox's book -- one of the best about Esperanto ever published in the English language -- will be available to the public again.
StevenBrewer