Early American Fiction

• Host: University of Virginia Library
• URL: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/eaf/

Description: The economics of electronic versions of rare books was the subject of a two-year study being undertaken by the University of Virginia Library. Sponsored by a $400,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project compared usage and costs between electronic texts and original printed editions of rare early American fiction.

The project produced a large collection of digital texts: the full texts of hundreds of novels and short stories first edition (422 titles held in 559 volumes). includes books published between 1789 and 1850. The books chosen for the project range from the earliest American novels, such as Susanna Rowson's

Charlotte (1791), through James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. All the texts were taken from rare first editions in the Barrett Collection and other collections in the Library's Special Collections Department.

All texts have been TEI-encoded in SGML. As well as the transcription, every page is available as a colour facsimile (24-bit colour circa 400 dpi tiffs with jpeg derivatives on-line). Part of the collection can be freely viewed online at the above URL. The full collection is marketed by Chadwyck Healey (Bell & Howell).

– David Seaman, (adapted from TEI-L posting, 9 September 1996, and Web page)

Contact:

David Seaman

Electronic Text Center

Alderman Library

University of Virginia

Charlottesville

VA 22903-2498

Tel: +1 804 924 3230

Fax: +1 804 924 1431

Email: etext@virginia.edu