Research Skills

Working in the Archives

HamletThe First Folio1623

Verre: glass

Vair: fur, ermine

Martha Pennyfeather, English novelist, 1816-1868

-3 novels, including A Wivenhoe Girl (1855), various editionsNow in print in Penguin Classics.

-Digital texts of the same novels on the Perdita web archive

-Digitised copies of annotated proof texts of A Wivenhoe GirlAvailable on the University of Lawrence, KS, website

-A Wivenhoe Girl filmed 1939 and 2006. Copies in the National Film Archive; drafts of 2006 screenplay available via the Director’s website; 1939 scripts lost?

Tracking down your sources

• Check the Penguin editions and Perdita web archive for details of where Pennyfeather’s papers are held.

• For more general topics (e.g. the Corn Laws), try the catalogues of major research libraries: the British Library, the Folger, the Huntington

• Don’t neglect the Special Collections held in the Sloman Library (she is a local writer)

• Ask for advice: teaching staff here, librarians and archivists, will all be eager to help

Pennyfeather, Martha, Papers 1855-1868, BL 4567

Before your visit

• Contact the library with a specific request (including shelf-mark)

• Explain who you are, and what your interest is in the papers

• Arrange admittance to the library (do you need letters of introduction?)

Leave in Locker Bring in Bag

• Coat• Bags• Ink pens• Food / drink• Digital camera• Propensity for

sudden sneezes / nose-bleeds

• WARM CLOTHES• Laptop• Notebook • Pencils• Wallet (including

library card)• Copy of text• Locker key

Recording the text

• The usual notes: author, title, date, page references

• Additional notes for MS / TS: the location of the text (library, shelfmark, collection) AND date of access

• Digital cameras? Not without permission…

• Transcriptions

Where were yee nymphs when the remorselesse deepe clos'd ore the head of your <your> lov'd Lycidas for neither were yee playing on the steepe where your old bards the famous Drüids lie nor on the shaggie top of Mona high nor yet where Deva spreds her wisard streame ay mee I fondly dreame <had yee> bin there, for what could that have don? <what could the golden-hayrd Calliope> for her inchaunting son <when shee beheld (the gods farre-sighted bee) his goarie scalpe rowle downe the Thracian lee> whome universal nature might lament <and {h}eaven and hel dep{lore} when his divine head downe> the streame was sent downe the swift Hebrus to {the} Lesbian shore.

Transcription Conventions

• If you are adding punctuation, or letters (or even word) left out accidentally, put your addition in square brackets, [thus]

• If part of the text is lost or illegible (the page is torn, the writing is crossed out, the ink has blotted), then put it in a pair of braces, with a dot for each illegible letter of letter space, {...}

• If part of the text is deleted, transcribe it, but distinguish it from the rest of the transcription <like this>

• If the writer has squeezed text in between the lines, or in the margin, mark it \like this/

• If the writer has put something into italics or bold, mark it ///like this///

Quoting your transcripts: the copyright issue

• Fair use: academic theses and dissertations are exempt from copyright fees and problems

• Copyright belongs to an artist’s estate for 70 years after his/her death, even if the physical papers belong to a library

• Even if your writer is long dead, ask before starting work on an edition

• WATCH: www.tyler.hrc.utexas.edu