News-sheet — Summer 2013

I. New publication schedule

2013 marks the beginning of a new publication schedule, which will provide a major annual update of Electronic Enlightenment each summer. Below, you will find information on what Electronic Enlightenment has to offer for Summer 2013!

II. New purchase model now available

Oxford University Press are now offering Electronic Enlightenment through a purchase model as well by subscription. For full information and a trial of EE, please contact Oxford University Press:

Customers outside the Americas

Apply for an institutional free trial or contact OUP for more details:
E:
T: +44 (0)1865 353705

Personal subscriptions are also available.

Customers within the Americas

Apply for an institutional free trial or contact OUP for more details:
E:
T: 1 800 624 0153

Personal subscriptions are also available.

III. Technical changes

Simplified login for institutional users

A new link on the login page — “Login with Athens/Access Management Federation” — now replaces two former links called “Login via your institution” and “Athens users login here”.

IV. Summer 2013 update — PEOPLE

Now more than 8,000 correspondents!

This summer’s major update takes EE’s biographical database to over 8,000 entries! The Project’s editorial team has worked hard to identify and provide biographical notes for hundreds of famous and not so famous people, from abolitionists and autobiographers to watchmakers and writers of memoirs.

With the addition of some native American correspondents (representing the Cherokee, Delaware and Iroquois nations), and an administrative body from Mauritius, our total count of represented nationalities rises to 52.

Here are a few of the interesting individuals added in this summer’s update —

Chief Attakullakulla [Little Carpenter] (born c. 1699–died c. 1797), Native American (Cherokee) — tribal leader, warrior;
Francis Fauquier (born 1703–died 1768), English — colonial governor;
Adam Ferguson (born 1723–died 1816), Scottish — clergyman, university professor, sociologist;
Sarah Fielding (born 1710–died 1768), English — novelist;
William Fitzhugh (born 1651–died 1701), English — colonist, plantation owner, lawyer, colonial politician, militia officer;
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck, chevalier de Lamarck (died 1829), French — naturalist, scientist;
Elizabeth Montagu (born 1718–died 1800), English — salon hostess, author;
William Nelson (born 1711–died 1772), American — merchant, politician;
Chief Oconostota [Great Warrior] (born c. 1710–died 1783), Native American (Cherokee) — tribal leader, warrior;
Edmund Pendleton (born 1721–died 1803), American — revolutionary politician, judge;
Frances Temple, Viscountess Palmerston (born 1733–died 1769), English — aristocrat.

We continue to work on the identification of unknown figures and to augment information about little known figures. You can help by sending any additional information or corrections to Electronic Enlightenment care of the .

V. Summer 2013 update — LETTERS

Now nearly 65,000 items of correspondence!

This summer’s major update takes EE’s database of documents to nearly 65,000 items! We are especially pleased to publish, interleaved in EE’s collection, materials from five major editions of correspondence (dating from 1679 to 1803). As always, significant information and accessibility is added (and will continue to be added) by EE’s derivative publication process.

These editions represent major contributions to three significant areas of interest in EE:

Colonial America (here represented by four editions of colonial Virginia leaders provided by the Virginia Historical Society);
French Enlightenment (here represented by Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre — a born-digital edition being specifically prepared for publication in EE);
Scottish Enlightenment (here represented by the significant figure of Adam Ferguson, drawn from the edition published by Pickering & Chatto).

1. Colonial America — Fauquier, Fitzhugh, Nelson & Pendleton.

EE is extremely pleased to be able to add to its unique collection the correspondence (and related papers) of four important colonial Virginia leaders from editions published by the Virginia Historical Society. These correspondences range from nearly a century before American independence to references, in 1803, to the Louisiana Purchase! It was a period in the development of the world’s first new nation based (at least in principle) on some notion of Enlightenment — though the extensive, cooly materialistic, references to slavery, throughout these letters, remind one of how easily enlightened inspiration is tempered by self-interest and the claim of practicality. This doesn't diminish the significance of these figures, however, but helps extend that importance beyond the colonial world to the broader study of American, British, and world history. The collections are conventionally identified by their key figure:

Francis Fauquier (born 1703–died 3 March 1768) — son of a French Huguenot immigrant to England; appointed Lieutenant Governor of Virginia Colony, serving as acting governor from 1758 until his death.
- The collection consists of 1477 documents and 300 correspondents (153 people new to EE, and 76 who already appear in other correspondence networks).
  (Base text: The Official Papers of Francis Fauquier, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia 1758–1768. Ed. George Reese. 3 vols. Charlottesville: Virginia Historical Society at the University Press of Virginia, 1980–1983. Print. Virginia Historical Society Documents vol. 14–16.)
William Fitzhugh (born 1651–died 1701) — member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, expert in colonial law; chairman of the committee revising the colony’s legal code; owned vast tobacco plantations worked entirely by slaves; recruited French Huguenot refugees to settle on his lands.
- The collection consists of 220 documents and 64 correspondents (57 people new to EE, and 9 who already appear in other correspondence networks).
  (Base text: William Fitzhugh and his Chesapeake world, 1676–1701: the Fitzhugh letters and other documents. Ed. Richard Beale Davis. Chapel Hill: Virginia Historical Society at the University of North Carolina Press, 1963. Print. Virginia Historical Society Documents vol. 3.)
William Nelson (1711–November 19, 1772) — member of the Virginia House of Burgesses; member of the Governor’s Council, acting briefly as governor; substantial landowner; his son Thomas Nelson, Jr. (Major General) signed the Declaration of Independence.
- The collection consists of 120 documents and 50 correspondents (16 people new to EE, and 34 who already appear in other correspondence networks).
  (Base text: The Correspondence of William Nelson as acting Governor of Virginia, 1770–1771. Ed. John C. Van Horne. Charlottesville: Virginia Historical Society at the University Press of Virginia, 1975. Print. Virginia Historical Society Documents vol. 11.)
Edmund Pendleton (September 9, 1721–October 23, 1803) — Virginia politician, lawyer and judge; attended the 1st Continental Congress as a Virginia delegate (with George Washington and Patrick Henry); led the conventions wherein Virginia declared independence and adopted the U.S. Constitution; revised Virginia's law code (with Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe; served as the first President of the Supreme Court of Virginia.
- The collection consists of 540 documents and 200 correspondents (127 people new to EE, and 50 who already appear in other correspondence networks).
  (Base text: The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, 1734–1803. Ed. David John Mays. 2 vols. Charlottesville: Virginia Historical Society at the University Press of Virginia, 1967. Print. Virginia Historical Society Documents vol. 7–8.)

2. French Enlightenment — Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.

Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (born 1737–died 1814), was a French military engineer, traveler, botanist, and romantic novellist. Electronic Enlightenment is proud to be co-publishing in collaboration with the Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, the first-ever edition of the complete correspondence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre as a born-digital collection .

This update publishes tranches 4 & 5 of this edition, consisting of 476 documents and nearly 120 correspondents (80 people new to EE, and 39 who already appear in other correspondence networks).

Next year, 2014, marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and EE, will be commemorating the event in two ways:

completion of the digital edition of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, with the Summer 2014 update;
a 2nd EE Colloquium, focusing on the correspondence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and the idea of networks.

3. The Scottish Enlightenment — Correspondence of Adam Ferguson.

EE is pleased to announce inclusion of the correspondence of a major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Ferguson FRSE (1 July 1723–22 February 1816) — Scottish philosopher; historian of the Scottish Enlightenment; and “father of modern sociology.” In an interesting coincidence, Ferguson was also a member of the 1778 Carlisle commission to America, sent to try and agree conditions for the cessation of hostilities with the breakaway colonies (for more on this relationship between content updates see the “Blogs and miscellanies” section below).

This collection consists of 462 documents and 125 correspondents (63 people new to EE, and 62 who already appear in other correspondence networks).
(Base text: The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, 2 vol., ed. Vincenzo Merolle et al. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1995).)

VI. Miscellanies

Electronic Enlightenment is now publishing regular items of interest as Miscellanies on the EE website; these are often posted on the OUP Blog site and the Huffington Post. The current miscellany is The marginalized Alexander Pope by Robert V. McNamee.