The Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA) is a peer-reviewed, award-winning digital archive and research project devoted to the poetry of the long 18th century (1688-1815). ECPA builds on the electronic texts created by the Text Creation Partnership from Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
History[]
Work on the small project that eventually evolved into the ECPA began in 2006. Originally intended as a focused contextualisation to the Thomas Gray Archive, covering the lives and works of contemporaries of Gray's such as William Collins, Mark Akenside, Joseph and Thomas Warton, Christopher Smart, and James Thomson, the materials quickly grew substantial in quantity and wide-ranging in subject matter and coverage.
In 2008, the idea for a much more comprehensive and ambitious project that would contribute to and benefit from the many exciting developments in digital literary studies and humanities computing at the time was born. With full-text production of ECCO-TCP in full swing in Oxford, early experiments in computational literary criticism proved promising and encouraged the participants to embark on a dedicated resource on 18th-century poetry. After several delays for various reasons, work on ECPA began in earnest in Winter 2012.
A private alpha version of the Website was completed in Winter 2015. The public beta phase of ECPA began on 1 May 2016 and ended on 1 May 2019. ECPA continuex to seek post-publication peer review at this stage; please do not hesitate to contact them with any issues, requests, or general feedback about the content, functionalities, or design of the Website.
Funding[]
ECPA is an unfunded research project. As a collaborative effort of scholars, teachers, and students of 18th-century poetry, it is made possible primarily through the generous donation of its contributors' time and expertise. They anticipate that funding opportunities, particularly through (interdisciplinary) collaboration on research projects or participation in national or international initiatives, will become available over time.
Current and future plans[]
The ECPA is currently being updated twice a year, in the Summer and Winter. Priorities include:
Digital collection[]
ECPA currently archives 3051 works by 319 authors, and will continue to work towards increasing the number of authors, particularly women authors, and works represented. Readers are invitated to send suggestions for additions they would like prioritized, and those with their own collection of texts, are welcome to collaborate on their inclusion in ECPA .
Research[]
ECPA is working on providing better interconnection between all analytical layers as these inform all current and future modes of reader engagement. As each layer interacts with the others at any given point as well as over time, they are looking for better ways to make these points of connectedness visible and highlight the ways in which these are maintained, dissolved, and taken up again (in different forms) over time.
External links[]
- About
- Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive Official website
This article uses Creative Commons-licensed (CC BY-SA 4.0) text from the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive.