Patricia Gael PhD Candidate, British Literature, PSU

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Patricia GaelPhD Candidate, British Literature, PSU

Penn State DH Interest Group Meet-UpApril 26, 2013

Eighteenth-Century Book Publishing in London and “Big Data”

Incorporating Quantitative Work into Traditional Humanities Research

+The Research Problem

How can the mid-eighteenth-century London market for poetry, drama, and fiction be characterized?

Thomas Rowlandson, Bookseller and Author (Source: Wikimedia)

+Records of Published Texts

The English Short Title Catalogue, or ESTC (a collaboration between the British Library and the University of California Riverside), lists more than 18,000 titles published in London between 1737 and 1749.

+Organizing Records of Published Texts ESTC search capabilities are limited, and

records cannot be sorted within the database. Organizing, categorizing, and annotating the

records required importing them into a structured database.

+Transforming the Data

ESTC records are stored in MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) format, which had to be converted to a format that could be imported into Filemaker. I chose XML.

MARC XML

+Filemaker Database

+Eighteenth-Century Texts

More than two-thirds of the books are available through Penn State’s subscription to Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO).

+Annotating the Filemaker Records

+Results

1737173817391740174117421743174417451746174717481749

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%39.5%

24.3%25.0%

16.1%12.4%14.7%

11.4%22.8%

18.3%14.0%

20.5%23.8%24.8%

52.2%68.5%66.9%

67.7%60.7%

61.1%73.8%

60.5%67.4%

65.6%64.1%

54.7%52.9%

8.3%7.2%8.1%

16.1%26.9%24.2%

14.8%16.8%14.2%

20.5%15.4%

21.5%22.3%

Drama Poetry Fiction

Percentages of Imaginative Literature in ESTC by Genre, 1737-49

+Results (cont.)

1/16°; 0.1%1/8°; 0.5% 1/4°; 5.6%1/2°;

6.9% 1°;

1.1%

2°; 31.9%

4°; 20.6%

8°; 25.7%

12°; 7.4%18°; 0.2%32°; 0.1%

2°; 0.2% 4°; 8.4%

8°; 57.3%

12°; 33.4%

18°; 0.7%

2°; 0.4% 4°; 3.3%

8°; 40.9%12°; 55.2%

18°; 0.2%

Percentage of ESTC Poetry by Format, 1737-49

Percentage of ESTC Drama by Format, 1737-49

Percentage of ESTC Fiction by Format, 1737-49

+Results (cont.)

Typical Advertised Title-Page Retail Prices by Genre, Format, and Length

+Results (cont.)

Author on Title Page; 36; 13%

Title Page Pseudonym; 92;

33%Author's Name in

Text, 7, 3%Author's Initials or

Pseudonym in Text, 5, 2%

None; 137; 49%

Author on Title Page; 292;

56%

Title Page Pseudonym;

53; 10%

Author's Name in Text, 23, 5%

Author's Ini-tials or

Pseudonym in Text, 15,

3%None;

137; 26%

Author on Title Page; 389; 30%

Title Page Pseu-

donym19515%

Author's Name in Text, 38, 3%

Author's Initials or Pseudonym in Text,

12, 1%

None; 664; 51%

Attribution of New and Reprinted Published Poetry Originally in English, 1737-1739

Attribution of New and Reprinted Published DramaOriginally in English, 1737-1739

Attribution of New and Reprinted Published Fiction Originally in English, 1737-1739

+Long-Term Challenges

How can problematic data be presented quantitatively without implying definitive and exact statistics?

Can the data be published alongside the study? Probably not: UC-R maintains the rights to the data

How can the data be preserved for continuing use?