The Digital Critical Edition of Captain Charles Johnson's
A General History of the Pyrates (1724 - 1726)

This digital critical edition consists of a parallel-text reading to visualize the changes in the first four editions  of A General History of the Pyrates, printed between 1724 and 1726. The making the digital critical edition was facilitated by the use of Versioning Machine V.4.0, and employs the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) Location-Referenced method. Utilizing this software allows readers/users to compare the variations across the diplomatic transcriptions in each of the editions. The research done and methodology employed in this projectcan be found in "Chapter 4" of my Thesis.

The goal of making a small digital critical edition was to address and compare six components of the book: The "Title Page," "The Preface," "The Contents," the first page of each chapter, the illustrations and the back matter, which would have meant encoding twenty-five sections of the book, including all the chapters listed below, as well as the back matter, and illustrations. This task was much larger than originally conceived, and extended beyond the scope of my M.A. Thesis. At the completion of my Thesis on May 13th, 2016, seven sections had been finished. These are: The "Title Page," "The Preface," "The Contents," "The Introduction," and the first page in "Chap. I. Of Captain Avery," in "Chap. II. The Rise of Pyrates," and in "Chap. III. Of Captain Martel." To view these seven sections, click on the headings below. Chapters marked with an * were either added, deleted, renamed, renumbered, or changed position throughout the four editions.