Digital Miscellanies Index

Project Description:

The Digital Miscellanies Index is a freely available online database of over 1700 poetic miscellanies published between 1557 and 1800. Poetic miscellanies are vital to understanding the diversity of early modern and eighteenth-century literary culture, and in mapping their contents the Index enables researchers to ask questions about who was reading what, when and how with greater scope and precision than ever before. The Index was created over three years, from 2010 to 2013, with funding from the Leverhulme Trust. The Principal Investigator on this project was Professor Abigail Williams, and the Postdoctoral Project Coordinator was Dr Jennifer Batt.

The Digital Miscellanies Index entered a second stage of development in September 2014 with a second project grant from the Leverhulme Trust. During this phase of the project, a new website for the Index was created in collaboration with Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services, and the Index became a linked data resource, incorporating information about early modern miscellanies from Verse Miscellanies Online, an online edition of early miscellanies created by Professor Michelle O'Callaghan (Reading), and from the Online Index of Poetry in Printed Miscellanies, 1640-1682, compiled by Dr Adam Smyth (Oxford). The second phase of the project was led by Abigail Williams, and the Postdoctoral Research Assistant was Dr Carly Watson.