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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

William Wordsworth, Guide to the Lakes, searchable digital texts

College

Humanities

Department

English

Abstract

As I worked with Shannon Stimpson on her 2010 honors thesis on William Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes, she and I regularly lamented that no one had produced a widely accessible, modern scholarly edition of this major work. With this in mind, after Shannon’s thesis defense I proposed that she, my colleague Paul Westover, and I collaboratively produce a new edition of the Guide. In the months that followed, we received a MEG grant from the university, recruited two undergraduate students (Rachel Wise and Emily Young) to help with the project, and used most of the grant money to travel as a research team in May 2011 to the Lake District in Northern England. There we familiarized ourselves with the landscapes featured in the Guide, photographed key scenes and landmarks for our envisioned electronic edition of the book, and studied manuscripts and early editions of Wordsworth’s text at the Wordsworth Trust’s library. In the two-plus years since, our research team has expanded to include two faculty members with expertise in digital editions (Dr. Billy Hall from English and Dr. Jarom McDonald from the Office of Digital Humanities), and in the spring of 2013 we submitted the various textual, hypertextual, and scholarly sections of our edition to Romantic Circles, the premier publisher of electronic scholarly editions of Romantic-era literature. After receiving a highly positive external review of our work in the fall of 2013 (see attached appendix), Romantic Circles agreed to publish our edition. We are now making final edits and technical adjustments and anticipate the electronic edition will be published sometime in early 2014. Once published our collaborative edition should prove a significant scholarly milestone for one mid-career faculty member (myself), three early-career faculty members (Drs. Westover, Hall, and McDonald), and three students who are preparing for careers in the academy (Shannon Stimpson, Rachel Wise, and Emily Young).

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