TEI-encoded edition of Erdman's Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake

Date:     Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:21:04 -0500
From:     Matt Kirschenbaum <mgk@POP.UKY.EDU>
Subject:  TEI-encoded edition of Erdman's Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake

21 February 2000

The editors of the William Blake Archive http://www.iath.virginia.edu/blake/) are very pleased to announce the publication of our searchable SGML-encoded electronic edition of David V. Erdman's Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. The addition of the electronic Erdman means that the site is now inclusive of an even greater range of Blake's work than the approximately 3000 digital images that will eventually form the structured core of the Archive proper. Based upon the text of the 1988 Newly Revised Doubleday Edition, the electronic Erdman represents almost 900 pages of printed material, comprising the complete writings of William Blake together with David V. Erdman's original textual notes (Harold Bloom's commentary omitted). The original ASCII text file we encoded for the electronic edition was generously supplied by Professor Nelson Hilton (University of Georgia), whose own electronic concordance to Erdman is a vital online resource for Blakeans.

The Blake Archive's electronic Erdman is tagged in SGML using the Text Encoding Initiative DTD and is presented online using Inso's DynaWeb software. But we should note that Erdman's edition is an extraordinarily rich and complex textual artifact in its own right, and encoding and rendering it has proven a substantial technical challenge. For that reason we consider this a beta release, and would welcome feedback and bug reports from users (blake@jefferson.village.virginia.edu).

We will be updating our electronic Erdman edition continually in response to user feedback, correcting any mistakes and adjusting the formatting. We also anticipate migrating the edition to a later version of the DynaWeb server, which will support keyword-in-context searching (analogous to that of a concordance) as well as allow for greater functional integration between the Erdman edition and the materials in the Archive proper. We plan to emend the electronic edition to correct errata in the printed editions of Erdman that have been discovered by the Santa Cruz Blake Study Group and other correspondents. Finally we intend to publish a Blake Archive Supplement to Erdman, which will allow us to add newly discovered Blake texts to the printed text, thereby making the William Blake Archive's electronic edition truly the complete writings of Blake.

The addition of our electronic Erdman is the first in a series of publications slated for this spring and summer. We will soon add two copies of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell to the Archive, at which point it will contain fully searchable and scalable electronic editions of 41 copies of 18 of Blake's 19 illuminated books in the context of full bibliographic information about each work, careful diplomatic transcriptions of all texts, detailed descriptions of all images, and extensive bibliographies. Soon after, we plan to publish collection lists for eight of the most significant collections of Blake's works. Fully encoded in SGML, these collection lists will be delivered online using Inso's DynaWeb software and will be fully searchable. Perhaps most significant will be the publication of Jerusalem, copy E. With this addition, the Archive will contain at least one copy of each of Blake's works in illuminated printing and multiple copies of most.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, Editors
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Technical Editor
The William Blake Archive

Prepared by Robin Cover for the The XML Cover Pages archive.

SEARCH Advanced Search ABOUT Site Map CP RSS Channel Contact Us Sponsoring CP About Our Sponsors NEWS Cover Stories Articles & Papers Press Releases CORE STANDARDS XML SGML Schemas XSL/XSLT/XPath XLink XML Query CSS SVG TECHNOLOGY REPORTS XML Applications General Apps Government Apps Academic Apps EVENTS LIBRARY Introductions FAQs Bibliography Technology and Society Semantics Tech Topics Software Related Standards Historic	TEI-encoded edition of Erdman's Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 12:21:04 -0500 From: Matt Kirschenbaum <mgk@POP.UKY.EDU> Subject: TEI-encoded edition of Erdman's Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake 21 February 2000 The editors of the William Blake Archive http://www.iath.virginia.edu/blake/) are very pleased to announce the publication of our searchable SGML-encoded electronic edition of David V. Erdman's Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. The addition of the electronic Erdman means that the site is now inclusive of an even greater range of Blake's work than the approximately 3000 digital images that will eventually form the structured core of the Archive proper. Based upon the text of the 1988 Newly Revised Doubleday Edition, the electronic Erdman represents almost 900 pages of printed material, comprising the complete writings of William Blake together with David V. Erdman's original textual notes (Harold Bloom's commentary omitted). The original ASCII text file we encoded for the electronic edition was generously supplied by Professor Nelson Hilton (University of Georgia), whose own electronic concordance to Erdman is a vital online resource for Blakeans. The Blake Archive's electronic Erdman is tagged in SGML using the Text Encoding Initiative DTD and is presented online using Inso's DynaWeb software. But we should note that Erdman's edition is an extraordinarily rich and complex textual artifact in its own right, and encoding and rendering it has proven a substantial technical challenge. For that reason we consider this a beta release, and would welcome feedback and bug reports from users (blake@jefferson.village.virginia.edu). We will be updating our electronic Erdman edition continually in response to user feedback, correcting any mistakes and adjusting the formatting. We also anticipate migrating the edition to a later version of the DynaWeb server, which will support keyword-in-context searching (analogous to that of a concordance) as well as allow for greater functional integration between the Erdman edition and the materials in the Archive proper. We plan to emend the electronic edition to correct errata in the printed editions of Erdman that have been discovered by the Santa Cruz Blake Study Group and other correspondents. Finally we intend to publish a Blake Archive Supplement to Erdman, which will allow us to add newly discovered Blake texts to the printed text, thereby making the William Blake Archive's electronic edition truly the complete writings of Blake. The addition of our electronic Erdman is the first in a series of publications slated for this spring and summer. We will soon add two copies of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell to the Archive, at which point it will contain fully searchable and scalable electronic editions of 41 copies of 18 of Blake's 19 illuminated books in the context of full bibliographic information about each work, careful diplomatic transcriptions of all texts, detailed descriptions of all images, and extensive bibliographies. Soon after, we plan to publish collection lists for eight of the most significant collections of Blake's works. Fully encoded in SGML, these collection lists will be delivered online using Inso's DynaWeb software and will be fully searchable. Perhaps most significant will be the publication of Jerusalem, copy E. With this addition, the Archive will contain at least one copy of each of Blake's works in illuminated printing and multiple copies of most. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, Editors Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Technical Editor The William Blake Archive Prepared by Robin Cover for the The XML Cover Pages archive.