The George Eliot Archive: Rediscovering the Personal Writing of George Eliot

Rose Kottwitz Author

07/31/2020 Added

15 Plays

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This presentation will discuss the digital George Eliot Archive with a focus on my work with the personal writing of George Eliot.

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[00:00:00.971]Hello! My name is Rose Kottwitz.
[00:00:02.941]I'm a Junior English major with a minor in Business
[00:00:05.678]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
[00:00:07.528]and today I'll be presenting on
[00:00:09.408]The George Eliot Archive:
[00:00:10.948]Rediscovering the Personal Writing
[00:00:12.578]of George Eliot.
[00:00:14.255]This summer, I had the opportunity to work
[00:00:16.275]with Dr. Beverley Rilett and her team on
[00:00:18.481]the George Eliot Archive through
[00:00:20.181]the Undergraduate Creative Activities and
[00:00:22.101]Research Experience program,
[00:00:23.781]or UCARE for short.
[00:00:26.818]The George Eliot Archive is an online repository
[00:00:29.218]of George Eliot's works,
[00:00:30.635]information about her life,
[00:00:32.445]and contemporary articles writen about
[00:00:34.815]her life and her works.
[00:00:36.985]The Archive traces its origins to
[00:00:38.805]the creation of the George Eliot Review Online.
[00:00:41.845]The George Eliot Review is a scholarly journal
[00:00:44.445]centered around George Eliot,
[00:00:46.485]the famous female Victorian author
[00:00:48.545]who wrote many influential works including
[00:00:51.185]Middlemarch, Adam Bede, and Romola.
[00:00:54.305]The digitization of this journal made half a century
[00:00:56.775]of scholarship available for free and led to
[00:00:59.455]Dr. Rilett creating a digital archive
[00:01:01.565]dedicated to George Eliot.
[00:01:03.919]She was inspired by other single-author
[00:01:06.119]digital archives at the
[00:01:07.279]University of Nebraska-Lincoln, such as
[00:01:09.599]the Willa Cather Archive and the
[00:01:11.489]Walt Whitman Archive.
[00:01:13.229]In 2019, the George Eliot Archive
[00:01:15.419]was finally published online.
[00:01:18.944]Currently, the Archive contains PDFs of
[00:01:21.314]George Eliot's works including her translations,
[00:01:23.994]contemporary commentary on both her life
[00:01:26.464]and works, an image gallery that contains
[00:01:29.444]images of various portraits and illustrations
[00:01:32.184]from her works, an interactive chronology
[00:01:35.320]outlining the major events of her life, and
[00:01:37.850]various interactive maps of her travels.
[00:01:40.650]Furthermore, all of this information is available
[00:01:43.320]to users for free under a creative commons
[00:01:45.730]license, which means that users may view
[00:01:48.430]and share the information for free so long as they
[00:01:51.200]give credit to the George Eliot Archive.
[00:01:54.169]The next phase of the George Eliot Archive
[00:01:56.299]project is to make the correspondence and
[00:01:58.659]journals of George Eliot available.
[00:02:01.965]One of the major collections of George Eliot's
[00:02:04.235]correspondence are the Cross Letters.
[00:02:06.595]The Cross Letters are a collection of
[00:02:08.605]George Eliot's letters compiled and edited
[00:02:10.835]by John Walter Cross, George Eliot's husband,
[00:02:13.983]in his book George Eliot's Life as Related
[00:02:16.543]in Her Letters and Journals published in 1885.
[00:02:20.218]As a member of the George Eliot Archive team,
[00:02:22.758]I was put in charge of preparing the
[00:02:24.558]Cross Letters to be published on the website.
[00:02:27.032]While all three volumes of George Eliot's Life
[00:02:29.462]are currently available on the website,
[00:02:31.592]it is difficult to search through them or
[00:02:33.352]find a specific letter. As such,
[00:02:35.752]it is our goal to make the letters contained
[00:02:38.102]in George Eliot's Life available in a
[00:02:40.112]user-friendly format. I downloaded the PDFs
[00:02:43.282]of the three volumes of George Eliot's Life
[00:02:45.924]and created separate PDF files for each
[00:02:48.334]of the 894 letters contained in them.
[00:02:51.392]I then recorded the metadata for each letter,
[00:02:54.402]which included information on the sender
[00:02:56.332]of the letter, the recipient, the date
[00:02:58.854]the letter was sent, and the pages on which
[00:03:00.984]the letter can be found in George Eliot's Life.
[00:03:03.976]This information will make it possible for
[00:03:06.356]users to search for letters by date,
[00:03:08.596]sender, or recipient.
[00:03:12.174]Although the Cross Letters are undeniably
[00:03:14.269]an important resource, they have been found
[00:03:16.799]to be at fault--something we want to
[00:03:18.889]ensure our users are aware of.
[00:03:20.783]Gordon S. Haight, who edited The George Eliot
[00:03:23.593]Letters, a 9-volume collection of George Eliot's
[00:03:26.273]correspondence that was published in 1954,
[00:03:29.169]found that Cross had heavily edited and
[00:03:31.789]censored the letters he included in
[00:03:33.509]George Eliot's Life.
[00:03:35.396]Haight revealed that Cross had removed
[00:03:37.216]vast portions of the letters, misdated letters,
[00:03:40.291]combined letters, mixed up the order of
[00:03:42.591]sentences, removed words and phrases
[00:03:44.871]from the sections he did include, and
[00:03:47.021]removed the mention of several people
[00:03:48.961]in George Eliot's life.
[00:03:50.979]We wanted to verify these claims for ourselves
[00:03:53.519]by doing line-by-line comparisons of the
[00:03:55.879]Cross Letters to Haight's George Eliot Letters;
[00:03:58.899]but after doing 15 comparisons, we realized
[00:04:02.039]that it would take too much time to compare
[00:04:04.219]all 894 letters and that making the letters
[00:04:07.279]available to our users as soon as possible
[00:04:09.611]was more important.
[00:04:11.403]However, in the 15 letters that we were able
[00:04:13.863]to compare, we found that Haight's claims
[00:04:16.283]held true. Vast portions of the original letters
[00:04:20.138]were missing from Cross's versions,
[00:04:22.732]the order of sentences was mixed up, and the
[00:04:25.572]dating of the letters was not always accurate.
[00:04:28.245]We hope that by making the Cross Letters
[00:04:30.195]available and easily searchable, scholars will be
[00:04:33.075]able to further verify Haight's claims and do further
[00:04:35.954]research on George Eliot's correspondence.
[00:04:39.726]George Eliot's Journals are another important
[00:04:41.787]piece of personal writing for scholars.
[00:04:44.019]To read these journals, you have to purchase
[00:04:46.464]The Journals of George Eliot edited by
[00:04:48.984]Margaret Harris and Judith Johnston.
[00:04:51.409]However, we want to make George Eliot's Journals
[00:04:53.799]available for free on the George Eliot Archive
[00:04:56.229]in a user-friendly format.
[00:04:58.101]My other project this summer has been to
[00:05:00.281]prepare the Journals to be put on our website.
[00:05:02.731]To do this, I am recording metadata for each
[00:05:05.241]journal entry, including the date of the entry,
[00:05:08.576]the pages on which the entry can be found in
[00:05:10.988]The Journals of George Eliot,
[00:05:12.748]the text of the journal entry,
[00:05:14.115]and any relevant contextual information.
[00:05:16.432]In order to make the Journals as user-friendly
[00:05:18.922]as possible, we are taking advantage
[00:05:21.352]of the digital nature of the Archive.
[00:05:23.716]Rather than making separate PDF files for
[00:05:26.106]each journal entry, we are creating an interactive
[00:05:28.929]timeline similar to the Chronology that is
[00:05:31.429]currently on our website.
[00:05:33.567]Users will be able to easily locate and read
[00:05:38.407]journal entries from specific days
[00:05:40.297]in George Eliot's life.
[00:05:43.262]Aside from the Cross Letters
[00:05:44.762]and George Eliot's Journals,
[00:05:46.492]several other projects have been in the works
[00:05:48.402]this summer and should be available
[00:05:50.052]on our website soon.
[00:05:51.745]These additions include a "Relationship Web"
[00:05:53.938]that will provide insight into George Eliot's
[00:05:56.098]relationships and acquaintances,
[00:05:58.027]many more commentary by contemporaries
[00:06:00.667]about George Eliot's life and works,
[00:06:02.876]additional maps of George Eliot's
[00:06:05.044]travels to Europe,
[00:06:06.254]including her trips to Germany and Spain,
[00:06:09.163]and a new website called George Eliot Scholars
[00:06:12.046]that will allow current scholars to share their
[00:06:14.466]research under a creative commons license.
[00:06:18.254]The work of the George Eliot Archive is
[00:06:20.294]important because it increases accessibility
[00:06:22.648]to George Eliot Scholarship and opens the door
[00:06:25.097]to further research in the field, by
[00:06:27.097]institutional and private scholars alike.
[00:06:29.905]The addition of George Eliot's
[00:06:31.591]personal writings--her correspondence
[00:06:33.622]and journals--is especially important because
[00:06:36.551]much of the research on her works has been
[00:06:38.590]exhausted, making her personal writing the next
[00:06:41.079]avenue of research for George Eliot scholars and
[00:06:44.176]Victorian Studies scholars.
[00:06:46.241]It is when we share our research, information,
[00:06:48.869]and resources that we encourage
[00:06:50.681]advancement and education.
[00:06:52.807]If you are interested in learning more about
[00:06:55.147]George Eliot or the George Eliot Archive,
[00:06:57.290]simply scan the QR code on this slide or visit
[00:07:00.130]GeorgeEliotArchive.org. Thank you!

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The George Eliot Archive: Rediscovering the Personal Writing of George Eliot

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