News-sheet — Autumn 2017
I. 2017 update — Correspondence (8,184 items)
This year’s update reinforces the fact that the Electronic Enlightenment Scholarly Edition of Correspondence is always moving towards being the most complete collection of letters possible. For example, the current update means EE has the largest collection of letters to/from Joseph Addison, Adam Smith and Voltaire available anywhere — something true too of many smaller sub-collections in EE.
We have been able to expand our direct support for students by providing a Digital Humanities Summer School bursary; and co-funding an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award resulting in “Reading and sociability in the correspondence of Elizabeth Montagu and friends” — a shared reading of letters in a born-digital mini-edition by Jack Orchard presented as our Autumn 2017 Miscellany.
A. Joseph Addison collection (353 letters):
- Addison, Joseph (born 1672–died 1719), English politician, member of Parliament, civil servant, poet, essayist.
— adding letters to/from 82 correspondents: from Ambassadors to the Court of St James’s to Ysidoro Casado de Acevedo y del Mazo, marques de Monteleone.
— primarily concerning Addison’s period as Secretary of State; this collection adds letters omitted from Graham’s OUP edition where non-literary documents are either ignored or at best cited in “Appendix I: Abstracts of letters — mainly official”. To date, EE has contained the 764 letters and abstracts already in print; but this update provides a further 353 letters in full, almost half again as many as has been previously available.
B. The Italian collection (6,312 letters):
This collection significantly broadens linguistically, geographically and thematically the unique offering available through EE.
- Amaduzzi, Giovanni Cristofano (born 1740–died 1792), Italian philologist, philosopher.
— adding letters to/from Corilla Olimpica (born 1727–died 1800), Italian poet, author.
— primarily concerning their personal relationship. - Baglivi, Giorgio (born 1668–died 1707), Italian medical researcher, anatomist, pathologist, academy member.
— adding letters to/from 83 correspondents, from Domenico Albini to Domenico Vitolo.
— primarily concerning topics from personal to financial affairs. - Galiani, Celestino (born 1681–died 1753), Italian mathematician, academic, scholar.
— adding letters to/from Guido Grandi (born 1671–died 1742), Italian churchman, Jesuit, philosopher, mathematician, engineer.
— primarily concerning travels around Italy. - Grandi, Luigi Guido (born 1671–died 1742), Italian churchman, Jesuit, philosopher, mathematician, engineer.
— adding letters to/from Jacob Hermann (born 1678–died 1733), Swiss mathematician.
— primarily concerning personal & mathematical issues. - Muratori, Lodovico Antonio (born 1672–died 1750), Italian author, historian, scholar and “father of Italian history”.
— adding 5,460 letters to/from 40 correspondents: from Pieter Aa to Pier Caterino Zeno. - Riccati, Jacopo (born 1676–died 1754), Italian mathematician, physicist.
— adding letters to/from primarily Antonio Vallisnieri (born 1661–died 1730), Italian physician, entomologist, zoologist, university teacher, academician.
— primarily concerning physics, and medicine.
C. Jean Le Clerc collection (624 letters):
- Le Clerc, Jean (born 1657–died 1736), Swiss biblical scholar, theologian, journalist.
— adding 624 letters to/from 70 correspondents from Joseph Addison to William Wotton.
— a radical of his age, Le Clerc was noted for his promotion of exegesis, that is the critical interpretation of the Bible, in which he applied rational methodologies drawn from his philosopher friend (and correspondent) John Locke. Le Clerc’s Logica sive Ars Ratiocinandi (1692), was translated into English and used by Ephraim Chambers as one of his sources when compiling his Cyclopaedia (1728); that in turn was used by Diderot and d’Alembert (in the John Mills and Gottfried Sellius translation of Chambers) as a starting point for their great Encyclopédie.
D. Voltaire collection (829 letters):
- Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (born 1694–died 1778), French author, essayist, philosopher.
— adding letters to/from almost 2 dozen correspondents from marquis d’Adhémar to baron de Montesquieu; this addition to the Voltaire collection provides 126 “new” letters (previously published in Besterman’s supplementary volume 130 of the Complete correspondence). The update also includes significant corrections and revisions to 696 letters. - Guérin, Claudine Alexandrine, marquise de Tencin (born 1682–died 1749), French aristocrat, courtier, salon hostess, author.
— adding letters to Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, 3rd duc de Richelieu (born 1696–died 1788), French army officer, courtier, diplomat.
— primarily concerning court gossip, especially as associated with Voltaire. - Seigneux, Gabriel de, seigneur de Correvon (born 1695–died 1775), Swiss politician, translator.
— adding letters to Philippe Joseph François Fabre de Saint-Véran (born c. 1735–died 1776), French archivist, genealogist, civil servant.
— primarily concerning Voltaire in Ferney, specifically regarding Voltaire‘s private theatre. - Séguier, Jean François (born 1703–died 1784), French archaeologist, epigraphist, astronomer, botanist, academician.
— adding letters to Marie Magdeleine Angélique de La Brousse, comtesse de Verteillac, born 1689–died 1751, French aristocrat, author.
— primarily concerning the tragedy La Merope by Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei, published Venice (1714), with annotations by Voltaire.
E. Other items of interest (66 letters):
- Barnard, Lady Anne (born 1750–died 1825), Scottish author, travel writer, poet, artist, socialite.
— 18 letters to Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (born 1742–died 1811), Scottish lawyer, civil servant, politician, member of Parliament.
— this extraordinary collection of letters written from South Africa reminds us that, given half-a-chance, women have always been adventurous, curious and clever. - Bentham, Jeremy (born 1748–died 1832), English philosopher, legal author, reformer.
— 2 documents to Pierre Étienne Louis Dumont (born 1759–died 1829), Swiss churchman, Protestant, journalist, author.
— primarily concerning Bentham’s plans for a “Panopticon” prison, specifically its presentation to the French since the English were more interested in prison hulks and transportation than prison reform. - Dodington, George Bubb, Baron Melcombe (born 1691–died 1762), English politician, member of Parliament, arts-patron, diarist, author.
— 4 letters written to Dodington while he was on the Continent: 2 from Cardinal Giulio Alberoni (1664–1752), Italian churchman, Catholic, courtier, aristocrat, prime minister; 1 from Sarah Churchill, duchess of Marlborough and John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough; and 1 letter from Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield born 1694–died 1773, English politician, diplomat .
— primarily concerning European affairs they make reference to kingdoms divided up “like Dutch cheeses”; Dodington’s Continental travels; and an invitation to Dodington to return home from the embassy in Madrid. - Hunter, Robert (born 1666–died 1734), Scottish army officer, colonial governor of New York, New Jersey, Jamaica.
— adding letters to the Board of Trade in London.
— primarily concerning the Caribbean, specifically with a 1732 slave rebellion in Jamaica. - Montagu, Charles, 1st duke of Manchester (born c. 1662–died 1722), English diplomat, politician.
From: a Mr Edwards (flourished 1700–1710), English courtier, civil servant.
— primarily concerning news from parliament and court. - Montagu, Elizabeth [née Robinson] (born 1718–died 1800), English salon hostess, author.
— adding letters to/from 16 correspondents from James Beattie to Jemima Yorke.
— primarily concerning collaborative reading and response. - Piozzi, Hester Lynch (born 1741–died 1821), Welsh poet, historian, diarist, salon hostess, businesswoman, brewer.
— adding letters to/from Arthur Murphy, born 1727–died 1805, Irish lawyer, author, journalist, playwright, actor.
— primarily concerning Joseph Addison, the theatre and a lawsuit. - Redding, Cyrus (born 1785–died 1870), English journalist, editor, author, wine expert.
— adding letters to The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, 1829.
— primarily concerning Africa, specifically regarding a M. Caillé's visit to Timbuktu. - Smith, Adam (born 1723–died 1790), Scottish philosopher, political economist, university teacher, academy member.
— adding letters to/from Adam Ferguson; the duke of Montrose; William Cullen; William Strahan; Philip, Earl Stanhope.
— primarily concerning patronage and legal issues. - Vichy-Chamrond, Marie Anne de, marquise Du Deffand [née de Vichy] (born 1697–died 1780), French aristocrat, salon hostess, author.
From: Charles Juste de Beauvau, prince de Beauvau-Craon (born 1720–died 1793), French aristocrat, army officer, government minister.
— primarily concerning plans to meet in Paris.
II. 2017 update — Biographical Dictionary (2,000 items)
EE now includes entries for people for whom we do not yet have correspondence, but who are connected with the existing collection. By providing “landing pages” for these people we want to encourage our readers to discover and contribute letters to the growing collection. Over the coming year we will be adding thousands more people to provide personal landing pages for authors of texts in the Oxford Text Archive (see below).
III. Electronic Enlightenment and Oxford Text Archive
The Oxford Text Archive (OTA) — a major repository of tens-of-thousands of full-text works — has moved to the Bodleian Library to join with Electronic Enlightenment. These two outstanding collections are involved in the creation of a new scholarly resource: “Lives, letters & works”. To celebrate the arrival of the OTA, and thereby begin this collaboration, we have linked more than 350 people, their letters, and full-text copies of their works — on the Search/Lives page look for “OTAwork” in the biography text field.
Subscribers have access to the works list from biography pages using the new ‘WORKS’ tab alongside the existing BIOGRAPHY, CORRESPONDENTS, & LETTERS tabs.
So far we have made links for around 360 authors. This covers over 3,800 full-text works over a wide range of people, titles and dates.
- John Quincy Adams (born 1767–died 1848), American president.
— An oration, pronounced July 4th, 1793, at the request of the inhabitants of the town of Boston, in commemoration of the anniversary of American independence. Boston, Massachusetts, 1793 - Joseph Buckminster (born 1751–died 1812), American churchman, Congregationalist.
— A discourse, delivered in the South, and in the North Church in Portsmouth, December 14, 1800: the anniversary of the death of George Washington, late president of the United States, and commander in chief of their armies. Portsmouth, New-Hampshire, 1800 - Joseph Cradock (born 1742–died 1826), English author, playwright, academician.
— Zobeide. A tragedy: As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden. London, 1762 - John Leland (born c. 1503–died 1552), English antiquarian, author, poet.
— The laboryouse iourney [and] serche of Iohan Leylande, for Englandes antiquitees geuen of hym as a newe yeares gyfte to Kynge Henry the viij. in the. xxxvij. yeare of his reygne, with declaracyons enlarged: by Iohan Bale. London, 1549 - Alexander Pope (born 1688–died 1744), English author, poet, translator.
— The rape of the lock: An heroi-comical poem. In five canto's. London, 1714 - Johann Georg Zimmermann (born 1728–died 1795), Swiss author, theologian, physician.
— Essay on national pride. To which are prefixed, memoirs of the author's life and writings. / Translated from the original German of the late celebrated Dr. J.G. Zimmermann, aulic counsellor and physician to His Britannic Majesty at Hanover. By Samuel H. Wilcocke. New York, 1799
III. MARC Records
We are pleased to make available a new set of MARC records produced with the assistance of the Bodleian Libraries cataloguing department. These supersede any previous records you may have for Electronic Enlightenment.
2481 Records: ee_marc_2017_11_all.zip (392kb zip file) November 2017.
Please note that these supersede any previous records you may have for Electronic Enlightenment. We will provide updated & new records separately in future updates.
The cataloguing department have also worked with OCLC to make our records aviable as a collection in Worldshare Global knowledge base.
A CONSER record is available from OCLC (244097540) which represents Electronic Enlightenment as a whole. You can downloaded it through your OCLC subscription or view it in WorldCat.
Read more about our MARC records.