Digitizing the Pyrates: The Making of a Digital Critical Edition of Captain Charles Johnson's
A General History of the Pyrates (1724-1726).
This page is a for my M.A.Thesis in the Collaborative Program in the Digital Humanities with the Department of English Language and Literature at Carleton University.
This page hosts a digital critical edition that consists of a parallel text reading to visualize the changes in the first four editions of a A General History of the Pyrates, printed from 1724 to 1726. This work has been attributed to Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe among many other titles, though this attribution has been contested.
By the time the first volume of the 4th edition was printed in 1726, a total of four additional chapters had been added to Volume I., while Volume II. contained all new material. The chapters about Captains Anstis, Philips & Spriggs first appeared in the 2nd edition in 1724; while the chapter about Captain Smith appeared in the 3rd edition in 1725. Some other notable changes are that "Chap. II. The Rise of Pyrates" is only found in the 1st edition, though the contents of the chapter are incorporated into "The Introduction" of the 2nd - 4th editions. "The Introduction" is not listed on the Title Page of the 1st edition, yet it does exist in this edition, and is titled "The History of the Pyrates" (which is also not listed on the Title Page of the 1st edition). Finally, in the 1st edition, "CHAP. V. Of Captain Thatch" has been renamed in the 2nd - 4th editions as "CHAP. III. Of Captain Teach." Furthermore, many of the chapter numbers and the Captains affiliated with those numbers have changed. For example, in the 1st edition "Chap. VIII. Of Captain England" becomes "Chap. V. Of Captain England" in the 2nd - 4th editions. However, the content of the chapters remains relatively the same, though there are exceptions. The vast majority of these changes are changes in the capitalization and spelling of words, or alterations to where lines end.
This project for my Thesis includes a small critical edition and the goal was to address six components of the book: The Title Pages, The Preface, The Contents, the first page of each chapter, the illustrations and the back matter, which would mean encoding twenty-five sections of the book, including those listed below as well as the back matter, and illustrations. However, at the completion of my Thesis on the May13th, 2016, only seven sections have been completed. These are: The Tile Page, The Preface, The Contents, The Introduction, Chap. I. Of Captain Avery, Chap. II. The Rise of Pyrates, and Chap. III. of Captain Martel. I will continue to work through the remaining sections, as my goal is to finish this project in the near future.
To view the comparative diplomatic transcriptions (created with the Versioning Machine V.4) of the sections of the book listed above, click on the links below. This project uses the Text Encoding Initiative's (TEI) Location-Referenced method. (Chapters marked with an * have either been added, deleted, renamed, renumbered, or changed position throughout the four editions).
III. Of Capt. Teach *
V. Of Captain Thatch *
VI. Of Captain Vane
VII. Of Captain Rackam
VIII. Of Captain England *
IX. Of Captain Davis *
X. Of Captain Roberts *
X. Of Capt. Anstis*
XI. Of Captain Worley
XII. Of Captain Lowther
XIII. Of Captain Low
XIV. Of Captain Evans
XV. Of Capt. Philips
XVI. Of Capt. Spriggs*
XVII. Of Capt. Smith*
User Experience Survey Design
During the fall of 2015, I conducted a user experience survey entitled: "Digitizing the Pyrates: A user experience survey about a digital editing platform that allows for different methods of encoding and interacting with a digital critical edition and compares four digitized editions of Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, 1724-1726, edited by Ingrid Reiche." The goal of this survey was to investigate what method of XML encoding was most user friendly. Five different approaches were applied to the Title Pages, and The Preface, using the Versioning Machine V.4. This allowed readers/users to experience different ways this work could appear, and informed the final encoding methodology applied to this project. The two sections and their various encoding methodologies can be seen by clicking on the links below for the Title Page and The Preface.
Updated May 2016
Legacy Trials: December 2014
Both of these trials were done to determine what platform was to be used to encode the above mentioned sections of A General History of the Pyrates. These were experiments done for various courses and work leading up to my M.A. Thesis. After using both the Versioning Machine V.4.0 and the UVic Image Mark-Up Tool, I chose the Versioning Machine primarily because I could encode all four editions to make a parallel-text edition, and because the UVic Image Mark-Up Tool, is as its name implies, is an image based platform. However, the UVic Image Mark-Up Tool does have the advantage of creating a type of index that lists the changes.
1a. Versioning Machine V.4
This was my first attempt at encoding the Title Page using the Versioning Machine V.4.0
This trial uses the Text Encoding Intiative's(TEI) Parallel Segmentation method. After using this method I discovered the Location-Referenced method, which is what I decided to use in the final iteration of this digital critical edition.
1b. UVic Image Mark-Up Tool
Click on the link below to see the original Title page from the 1st edition (1724). It has been marked up to show where changes were made in subsequent editions.
Title Page