Encoding the Vandegrifter: Developing a Digital Edition of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson’s Unpublished Stories

This paper discusses the benefits and challenges of using TEI-encoded XML to produce a digital scholarly edition, focussing on the recently launched edition of the unpublished stories of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, Encoding the Vandegrifter.

We consider all stages of the project, from archival discovery, digital workflows, project management, training, collaborative working, design, user experience, launch and more, and also explore the significance of digital humanities projects for the wider work of feminist recuperation.

This seminar will be of particular relevance to those who are thinking about creating a TEI-encoded edition for their own work, or who would like to learn more about the process of building sustainable digital projects that follow the principles of minimal computing, a strand of digital humanities work that is attentive to the ecological implications of computation and seeks to find ways to minimise them.

Anouk Lang is Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities in the Department of English at Edinburgh, where she teaches twentieth- and twenty-first century literature. Her most recent publication is an article on the Modernism/Modernity Print Plus platform on using machine learning to study periodicals.

Robyn Pritzker is a postdoctoral affiliate of the CDCS and has worked on many research projects within the humanities, digital or otherwise. She has written about nineteenth century women’s literature, American identity, and the Gothic both onscreen and in writing.