Project Overview

Welcome to the home page of "My Dear Elizabeth: Letters from Sophia Peabody Hawthorne to Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, ca. 1837-1868," an electronic edition of five letters written by Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871) to her sister Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894). Still in development in cooperation with the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (RBMS) of The Ohio State University Libraries, this project will eventually provide full critical apparatus for the letters as well as various "views" of each letter, including an uncluttered reading or "literary" view; a view designed for philological study of the manuscripts; and a side-by-side view of the text and page images.

Coordinating Editor: H. Lewis Ulman
Editorial Teams and Revision History:
     Letter 1 (ca. 1837)
     Letter 2 (1839)
     Letter 3 (1859)
     Letter 4 (1863)
     Letter 5 (1868)

Links to draft "views" of the letters

• August 1837:       Literary | Philological | Text/Image
• November 1839: Literary | Philological | Text/Image
• January 1859:      Literary | Philological | Text/Image
• Autumn 1863:     Literary | Philological | Text/Image
• December 1868:  Literary | Philological | Text/Image

[Draft versions: See project update below.]

Project Goals

• to provide Internet access to critical editions and high-quality images of the unique print and manuscript holdings of the RBMS.
• to help students develop the critical judgment and practical skills necessary to develop, use, and evaluate digital materials;
• in partnership with faculty, library staff, and IT staff, to develop the collective expertise, facilities, and institutional structures to produce, catalog, and disseminate electronic resources for teaching and research on an institution-wide scale;

Technical Standards

• Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
• The NINCH Guide

Project Update

As of March 2005, draft transcriptions of all five letters, encoded according to the XML-compliant Text-Encoding Initiative Guidelines (TEI P4), have been prepared by students in an English Department course focusing on digital media and English studies.

During April 2005, the XML transcriptions and XSL style sheets will undergo a final round of editorial checks.

• Index and links to manuscript page images (zoom requires Flash Player)

• XML source files for Letter 1 (excerpt)
• XSL style sheet for literary view (excerpt)
• XSL style sheet for philological view (excerpt)

• Manuscript and editorial features encoded in XML markup
• Metadata encoded in XML markup