Let’s Get Digital

At the physical archive I visited, I scanned 35 pages of Montagu’s Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M–y W—-y M—-e. I also located at least eight relevant, scanned copies of this work on Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO), “the largest and most comprehensive online historical archive of its kind” containing “every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom between the years 1701 and 1800,” according to its website. I may cross-reference the physical copy I scanned with the digital copies I found when composing my Mini-Edition and/or Critical Edition. One thing the texts won’t have in common: My finger and the fancy, heavy shoe-string contraption the archive provided me to hold down the pages. I will also be searching on ECCO and Early English Books Online (EEBO) for copies to compare to the other two texts that I’ve scanned–Eliza Haywood’s The Wife. and The Husband. In Answer to the Wife.–along with my still coveted Female Spectator volume 3 (containing the warrior woman anecdote). Though ECCO and EEBO are separate entities under separate paywalls (Gale and ProQuest), the user has the ability to conduct an ECCO/EEBO cross-search. I will also consult the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC)–which does not house digital editions of texts but, rather, indexes them–in order to locate additional digital and physical archives at which these texts are located. I am unsure as to the value this will serve for my Mini-Edition–maybe I will unearth some discrepancies to tell people about in the editorial glosses–; however, this is the current plan. 

While I have been rummaging through about ten other digital humanities sites/archives that house long-eighteenth-century women’s writing, including Northeastern University’s Women Writers Project (also paywalled, yet only partially) and Princeton’s special collection Unseen Hands: Women Printers, Binders & Book Designers (free of charge), the most stunning find, to me, is the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection (like ECCO, powered by Gale). Not only is this collection of primary source material key to my scholarship due to the fact that I enjoy focusing on nonfiction writing by and about women; the content including “1,000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers” which “helps researchers chart the development of the newspaper as we now know it” was curated by my favorite novelist’s (Frances Burney’s) brother, the Rev. Charles Burney. Because I am interested in the novel’s development over time, which coincides with the development of nonfiction, journalistic writing in the eighteenth century, this source intersects with so many of my interests. Unfortunately, we do not have access to this resource through Wayne State; I could request a trial. 

I also further explored 18thConnect.org: a search portal, peer-reviewing organization and online community that uses crowd-sourced correction and aggregates “845,310 peer-reviewed digital objects from 60 federated sites.” It is a product of the Center of Digital Humanities Research at Texas A&M University. In reviewing 18thConnect’s recent presentation slides published on its website, I learned it recently provided guidance on DH projects at the 2019 Behn/Burney and International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) conferences and, most important, that it conducts peer-review on digital humanities datasets, including WordPress sites, which our forthcoming Warrior Women Project at Wayne State is. 18thConnect may serve as a valuable resource for me not only as an archive, but as a potential source for peer-review of future DH projects/editions. 

Works Consulted (Chosen Texts)

Haywood, Eliza. Present for a servant maid; or, The sure means of gaining love and esteem … To which are added directions for going to market; also, for dressing any common dish, whether flesh, fish, or fowl. With some rules for washington, &c. 1693-1756.

—. The Wife. 1693-1756.

—. Husband. In answer to The wife. 1693-1756.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M–y W—-y M—-e; written during her travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to persons of distinction, men of letters, &c., in different parts of Europe. Which contain among other curious relations, accounts of the pol…. 1689-1762.

—. Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, including her correspondence, poems, and essays. 1689-1762.

—. Letters and works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu / edited by her great grandson, Lord Wharncliffe. 1689-1762.—. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; select passages from her letters, ed. by Arthur R. Ropes…With nine portraits after Sir Gedfrey Kneller and other artists. 1689-1762.