My Experience with the George Eliot Archive

Sarah Guyer Author

03/31/2021 Added

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This presentation is a summary of my work surrounding the processing of two collections of correspondence that relate to Victorian-era author George Eliot; the Girton Correspondence and the Warwickshire Correspondence.

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[00:00:02.070]Hello everyone.
[00:00:02.850]My name is Sarah Guyer and I'm an English major with a concentration in creative
[00:00:06.030]writing and a business minor.
[00:00:07.620]And I'll be presenting my collaboration with the George Elliot archive under the
[00:00:10.380]support of Dr. Beverly Rilett. Um,
[00:00:13.200]so the George Elliot Archive is a multifaceted open access platform dedicated to
[00:00:16.920]providing scholars and web searchers free public access to all things
[00:00:20.220]George Elliot. Born Mary-Ann Evans in 1819,
[00:00:23.280]the Victorian era editor, translator, and poet is best known for her novels and
[00:00:26.820]the themes she stresses that were not often found in literature at the time.
[00:00:30.210]Some of Elliot's most popular works are Middlemarch, the Mill on the Floss, and
[00:00:33.030]Adam Bede, and she's lauded
[00:00:34.530]to have contributed greatly to the addition of a psychological factor in
[00:00:37.560]characterization in her novels.
[00:00:40.200]Often Elliot depicts the trials and tribulations of marriage and her work,
[00:00:42.960]which was, until that point, rather underrepresented in the literary world.
[00:00:46.710]The George Elliot Archive is devoted to exploring and disseminating those
[00:00:49.440]powerful themes through the layers of information located on the archive,
[00:00:51.990]and it's two sister sites,
[00:00:53.400]the George Elliot Review Online and George Elliot Scholars. On the Archive
[00:00:56.880]searchers can find open access copies of all her works, images of herself,
[00:01:00.030]her characters, and her inspirations, itineraries of her travels across Europe,
[00:01:03.900]a chronology of her life events, biographies,
[00:01:06.270]and commentaries on her work and fascinatingly scandalous love life,
[00:01:09.150]and several other projects in the works that will continue to bolster the only
[00:01:11.730]scholarly archive of its kind devoted to George Elliot.
[00:01:15.180]There are roughly 12 of us on the team at the moment, though people come and go,
[00:01:18.150]and we have weekly meetings where we show and tell our respective tasks
[00:01:21.090]so that the group is aware of the whole of the project.
[00:01:23.580]Some of my team members are working on cataloging articles and reviews
[00:01:26.160]published by George Elliot's contemporaries that have specific opinions on her
[00:01:28.950]work or life. And some are beginning to finalize a two year project,
[00:01:31.980]that will be an interactive visual web of all of George Elliot's relationships.
[00:01:35.370]All of us deliberate problems and solutions and exchange information,
[00:01:38.070]to be sure we are prepared as well as we can be within the context of our
[00:01:40.620]individual projects and the archive as a whole.
[00:01:43.740]My work in the archive has been largely centered around correspondence that
[00:01:46.530]relates in some way to George Elliot. So the Girton Correspondence,
[00:01:49.950]or as I like to call it,
[00:01:50.760]Girton Gals project is a collection of letters written to from and about
[00:01:54.060]George Elliot and her circle of feminist contemporaries, including Bessie
[00:01:57.120]Rayner Parkes, Barbara Leigh-Smith Bodichon, and Emily Davies.
[00:02:00.240]The ladies apart from Elliot founded the Girton college in 1869,
[00:02:03.660]which was the first women's college in the University of Cambridge. In 2016, Dr.
[00:02:07.440]Bev was finally granted leave to examine the manuscripts housed in the Girton
[00:02:10.290]College Library and snapped 300 photos of hitherto unpublished correspondence
[00:02:14.280]matched with identification cards that corresponded to archival information
[00:02:17.400]listed on Cambridge's tracking database.
[00:02:19.620]My job was to organize these pictures into PDFs of each letter,
[00:02:22.200]catalog the letters, and then transcribe those that had not yet been transcribed.
[00:02:26.010]shown is a picture of my folder on my computer and the Excel spreadsheet I used
[00:02:30.870]to catalog. Though I was an English major in name,
[00:02:33.600]I had never actually transcribed anything before, but Dr.
[00:02:36.270]Bev scheduled meetings that stretched into the evenings to run through
[00:02:38.760]transcriptions with me and explain nuances of the time,
[00:02:40.890]like how two 's's together are sometimes denominated with a letter that looks like
[00:02:43.740]an 'f'. I had never used any Adobe program before, either, except for Flash,
[00:02:47.760]so it was a learning experience for me,
[00:02:48.960]as I had the opportunity to master the inner workings of Adobe Acrobat pro,
[00:02:51.960]which is the PDF editor.
[00:02:53.610]My organizational skills were challenged and improved by the larger than life
[00:02:56.370]Excel spreadsheet
[00:02:57.030]I used to catalog, which, in my desired career as an editor is something that cannot be
[00:03:00.370]taken lightly.
[00:03:01.630]This project gave me an opportunity to work with manuscripts before the advent
[00:03:04.450]of my career,
[00:03:05.320]which has given me a leg up in understanding the inner workings of archival
[00:03:07.810]work. To top that off, I also spent time perusing Cambridge's tracking database,
[00:03:11.350]which allowed me to understand the archiving language used and how to navigate
[00:03:13.930]the style of organization that was employed.
[00:03:16.180]I also got to read some really fun gossip about Elliot and her relationship with
[00:03:18.970]George Henry Lewes, who was married to another woman and had four children,
[00:03:21.900]though he and his wife had been about as separated as a couple
[00:03:23.800]could be by the time he and Elliot started living together. Um,
[00:03:28.150]I had to organize files that went basically like this, uh,
[00:03:32.080]set of images down to the folder in the bottom. Um,
[00:03:36.340]these are pages from the letters that I had to transcribe,
[00:03:40.150]and this is an example of a clean PDF next to a transcription.
[00:03:45.220]My next collection was the Warwickshire Correspondence,
[00:03:47.500]which is subdivided into 11 groups that focus more on Elliot's family and
[00:03:50.230]friends and items or events that affected them.
[00:03:52.030]There is correspondence from George Henry Lewes, to his son, Herbert,
[00:03:54.490]to lawyers, and to other friends, as well as correspondence from George Elliot's
[00:03:57.070]second husband, John W. Cross, to their circle of friends.
[00:04:00.130]Some of the letters relate to her brother and father who were disapproving of
[00:04:02.590]her relationship with George Henry Lewes. The
[00:04:04.900]Warwickshire Collection is all about the family
[00:04:06.310]and it is in addition to the insights provided about their relationships with
[00:04:09.340]George Elliot, the correspondence allows us to see more of the world
[00:04:11.830]the family members themselves lived in and how the societal pressures that
[00:04:14.560]surrounded them contributed not only to their treatment of Elliot,
[00:04:17.110]but also how Elliot acted and wrote. These letters were gathered from an open
[00:04:20.410]access platform and hosted by the Warwickshire County Council,
[00:04:22.840]which allowed the letters to stay connected to their related metadata,
[00:04:25.780]like author, recipient, date, and the content of the letter. Um,
[00:04:29.410]all those things are collected on the Excel spreadsheets,
[00:04:31.810]and it's the reason why they are so large. Organizing and cataloging these letters
[00:04:36.070]was easier because I had already learned how to use Adobe Acrobat Pro and how
[00:04:39.250]best to manage the process,
[00:04:40.300]but I still ended up finding loopholes and shortcuts that allowed me to work
[00:04:42.730]even more efficiently. Using a different archival website
[00:04:45.310]allowed me to notice the similarities and differences to the systems used at
[00:04:47.830]Cambridge. It made it possible for one organization--
[00:04:52.480]--made it possible for me to understand the broader themes and goals of archiving,
[00:04:55.000]rather than specifics of how this one organization catalogs metadata.
[00:04:58.390]During the advent of this project,
[00:04:59.590]three of my team members were beginning to tackle other collections of
[00:05:01.660]correspondence as well,
[00:05:02.620]so I was provided the opportunity to share my tips and tricks with my teammates
[00:05:06.070]and become a source of support. With steady application of my social skills,
[00:05:09.280]I am now able to positively contribute to group discussions and the work my
[00:05:11.920]teammates put in. Um,
[00:05:13.810]this is an example of my clean folder of the Warwickshire Correspondence,
[00:05:17.620]a clean PDF, and then how that PDF relates on the Excel spreadsheet,
[00:05:21.220]where it is highlighted because it needs a transcription. The projects I
[00:05:24.910]and my teammates have been working on provide insights into George Elliot as a
[00:05:27.520]person, and allow us to begin to see the factors in her love, social, familial,
[00:05:30.760]and platonic life that influenced what she wrote and how she wrote about it.
[00:05:34.360]As the only scholarly platform devoted to her,
[00:05:36.250]the George Elliot Archive's worth
[00:05:38.230]is immeasurable as it and its team continue to supply the web with free, public
[00:05:41.290]access to all things George Elliot. Thank you.

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My Experience with the George Eliot Archive

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