H699: Introduction to 18th-century Studies
For the purposes of our discussion today and your projects, here are links to some of the core collections of digitized, searchable 18th-century texts, with notes about special quirks and features.
I. Comprehensive collections
Universal library?
Google Books and its academic counterpart, Hathi Trust contain surprisingly large numbers of 18th-century books in various languages, randomly digitized from participating academic libraries. Hathi's search options, even in the advanced catalog search, are rudimentary so far, but the bibliographic information is better than Google's. Google's advanced book search does at least make it possible to combine a catalog search with a full-text search, but Google's bibliographic data (even basic stuff like date of publication and name of author) is definitely not reliable so far. All of that said, if your "long eighteenth century" leans heavily on the early nineteenth century, Google/Hathi is almost the only place you'll find a good collection of digitized texts.
Anglophone collections
Early English Books Online claims to contain every book published in the English-speaking world from 1475-1700, as well as a lengthy list of 17th-century English periodicals. Bear in mind, though that EEBO consists primarily of page images, without full-text. (It was the first large-scale digitizing project, and much of its contents are in gothic typefaces that don't OCR as easily.) About 25,000 titles have been re-keyed and are fully searchable. To access only the full-text portion of the EEBO, use the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership (EEBO TCP) site, or use the advanced search in EEBO proper and limit to "items with keyed full text."
Features: EEBO proper puts the focus on bibliographic searching, although it does offer to search for word variants, and the advanced search allows one to distinguish between keywords in the full text and keywords in the bibliographic data. EEBO-TCP has more sophisticated full-text searching, including proximity searching (but note that it measures proximity in characters rather than words, unlike most other interfaces.)
Eighteenth Century Collections Online is a huge collection of books printed in Britain and Ireland, or in English anywhere in the world, in the 18th century. Catalog/bibliographic searching is basic, but there's quite sophisticated full text searching.
Features: three different wildcards (* =any number of missing characters, ?=exactly one missing character, eg wom?n for woman or women, !=one or zero missing characters, eg book! for book or books); logical operators; nesting; two different proximity operators (w=within, eg adam w3 apple for apple 3 or fewer words after adam and n=near, eg adam n3 apple, for adam and apple three or fewer words apart in either direction).
Early American Imprints contains materials printed in the North American colonies/ early United States, 1639-1800. It can be cross-searched with Early American Newspapers and American Broadsides and Ephemera. The search interface draws on the strengths (while replicating the eccentricities) of the bibliographies from which these collections are drawn.
Features: Search "facets" (genre, era, place, etc) can be combined with logical and proximity operators and wildcards. Proximity operators: adj=adjacent, eg adam adj3 apple for apple 3 or fewer words after adam; near, eg adam near3 apple for adam and apple three or fewer words apart in either direction. Wildcards: *=any number of missing characters, ?=one missing character.
American Periodicals Series Online contains about a hundred 18th-century North American periodicals. It has very complex/sophisticated search options, including the ability to find two search terms NOT within x number of words of each other! (Let me know if you figure a good way to use that feature).
Features: oodles of proximity operators: "W/# finds documents where these words are within some number of words apart (either before or after); W/PARA finds documents where these words are within the same paragraph (within approx. 1000 characters); W/DOC finds documents where all the words appear within the document text (use W/DOC in place of AND to retrieve more comprehensive results); NOT W/# finds documents where these words appear but are not within some number of words apart (either before or after); PRE/# finds documents where the first word appears some number of words before the second word."
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection contains newspapers from the British Library, including some important 18th-century titles. It is produced by the same vendor who brings us ECCO, so has a similar search interface.
See Times Digital Archive for the London Times, 1785--. This is a more basic search interface (no proximity searching) --the main feature is being able to limit searches to different sections of the newspaper (advertisements, obituaries, etc).
There are two other collections of British periodicals: Eighteenth Century Journals and British Periodicals.
Eighteenth Century Journals features: wildcard and proximity options are clearly stated on the advanced search page, no need to dig through the Help looking for them
British Periodicals features: helpful genre and article type limits; wildcard: *=any number of missing characters; proximity operators: near and fby=followed by, eg adam near.3 apple for adam and apple 3 or fewer words apart in any order, or adam fby.3 apple, for apple 3 or fewer words after adam.
Other languages:
So far, nothing like these huge comprehensive English-language collections exists for any other language. The closest thing is Gallica, digitized collections from the Bibliotheque Nationale of France, which (as of March 2010) is up to 1 million documents. There are wonderful things in Gallica, but using it will make you pull your hair out by the handful. Much more user-friendly is the small collection (~3000) of core texts in ARTFL, "American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language."
Gallica features: the advanced search allows some combination of bibliographic and full-text searching, but no proximity operators. Help and search commands are in French, but presumably you won't bother with Gallica unless your French is up to the task of reading this.
ARTFL features: excellent search interface with proximity options, bibliographic searching, etc right on the screen.
At almost 200,000 items, the German Digitale Bibliothek, Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum is a drop in the bucket.
Retrospektive Digitalisierung wissenschaftlicher Rezensionsorgane und Literaturzeitschriften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts aus dem deutschen Sprachraum is a smallish but respectable collection of German-language periodicals.
II. Topical collections
The Chadwyck-Healey Literature collections are all full-text, searchable via the same interface, proximity options, etc, as British Periodicals. English Poetry Database is a massive collection of British, Irish, Scottish and Welsh poets, from the Anglo-Saxon period through the end of the nineteenth century (text only, no page images). Along the same lines are English Drama and American Drama. Eighteenth Century Fiction and Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 contain both page images and re-keyed text.
Features: since the text has been re-keyed, consider using these collections, rather than ECCO and Early American Imprints, for "word-crunching"-types of projects
Electronic Enlightenment is a collection of correspondence and other documents generated by key Enlightenment figures. These are all re-keyed (and in most cases, already edited and published) documents. The interesting feature is the editors' attempt to recreate the "web" of interactions.
In the First Person is an index to several biographical collections, including (of 18th-century interest) British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries and Early Encounters in North America. These are smallish, pre-selected, re-keyed collections. Their most interesting feature is the detailed indexing, which makes it possible to quickly pull up all discussions of say, the writer's courtship, or the French Revolution. From the same publisher: Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period and Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period.
Making of Modern Law: Trials 1600-1926 Digital Archive and Making of the Modern World (based on the Goldsmith-Kress Library of Economic Literature) are produced by the same people who bring us ECCO, with the same search interface.
Past Master's Philosophers contains the works of several canonical 18th-century philosophers. Re-keyed texts, proximity searching available from the advanced search page. Again, good for "word-crunching" projects.
Proceedings of the Old Bailey is a searchable version of the complete records of London's central criminal court, 1674-1913, along with the Ordinary of Newgate's Accounts (narratives of lives and deaths of executed convicts, 1676-1772). The search options allow one to combine indexing terms such as offfence, verdict and punishment with full text keywords.
Features: rudimentary full-text searching: "+" and "-" for logical operators, quotation marks for phrases, "*" for wildcard, no proximity operators or spelling variant options.
Last updated March 7, 2010 by Celestina Savonius-Wroth
