M.A. Thesis: A Digital Critical Edition of A General History of the Pyrates

This is a work in progress being constantly updated for my M.A. Thesis in the collaborative progam English and the Digital Humanities at Carleton University.

It is a digital critical edition that consists of a parallel text reading to visualize the changes in 4 editions and one issue of a A General History of the Pyrates (1724). The work was controversially been attributed to Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe among many other titles.

By the printing of the first volume of the 4^th edition five additional chapters have been added about Captains Teach, Anstis, Spriggs, Phillips, Smith. Captains Anstis, Spriggs & Phillips appear in the 2^nd edition, and Smith appears in the 3rd edition. Interestingly Captain Thatch is only in the 1st edition.

Currently I am working on user experience testing for the title pages and the Preface using the Versioning Machine V.4. The pages of the Preface are is So all feedback is appreciated.

This project includes a small critical edition spanning the first 4 editions and 1 issue of this text from its first printing in 1724 to its 4^th edition, which includes two volumes in 1726. Within these three years the book doubles in size. For now my Thesis will be addressing six section of the book: The Title Pages, The Preface, The Contents, the first pages of each chapter, the illustrations and the back matter.

To view the variant readings of the sections of the book click on the links below. Currently the two sections encoded for a user experience experiment for a final paper in the course "Issues in the Digital Humanities" are the "Title Page" and "The Preface" - so these are the only sections that work.

The Contents (Click on the links below to see each section of the book as a comparative diplomatic edition created with the Versioning Machine V.4)

Title Page