Advances in Enlightenment at Oxford - University of Oxford

Description

A new digital initiative from the University, hosted by the Bodleian Library, offers unrivalled access to the correspondence of the greatest thinkers and writers of the long 18th century.The Electronic Enlightenment project aims to bring under one umbrella the intricate web of correspondence among 6,000 leading political, cultural and academic figures of the 18th century including Addison, Bentham, Boswell, Defoe, Hume, Kant, Locke, Pope, Rousseau, Smith, Swift, Sterne and Voltaire. The project began almost 10 years ago supported through funds made available from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.Based on the best critical editions, the resulting database currently provides access to the digital text of 53,000 letters and documents mainly in English, German, French and Italian. Featuring over 230,000 scholarly annotations, Electronic Enlightenment is updated twice a year with new material, including previously unpublished correspondence and enhanced functionality. One of the most exciting aspects of digitizing the content and making it cross-searchable is that we are discovering new connections between writers and recipients.Dr Robert McNamee, Director for Research and Dev

Original URL

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2008/081009.html

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2008/081009.html