The
Corvey Novels Project The
Corvey Novels Project
Link to CW3 (Sheffield Hallam University)
Link to Corinne (Sheffield Hallam University)
Link to British Fiction 1800 - 1829; A Database of Production, Circulation & Reception
The Corvey Novels Project at the University of Nebraska
In 1999 the University of Nebraska Libraries acquired the extensive microfiche
archive known as the "Edition Corvey." This remarkable archive of
Romantic-era literary texts in English, French, and German comprises nearly
9,000 volumes, many of which are exceedingly scarce. Spanning nearly a century,
the collection is strongest in the years from 1790 to 1840, including a nearly
complete representation of British fiction published between approximately 1815-1835.
A full description of this collection and its significance is available through
this
link. The link also includes information about supplementary secondary
materials for research and study available at the University of Nebraska.
As part of an international effort to make materials from and relating to the Corvey Collection available to scholars worldwide, the University of Nebraska is cooperating with electronic-based projects based at Sheffield Hallam University and the Cardiff University, in the United Kingdom, to develop and disseminate materials for research and study of these primary texts.
For its part, Sheffield Hallam University has begun an ambitious two-level project focusing on the women writers represented in the Corvey Collection. The initial aim of the SHU project is to establish an on-line data- and text-base featuring synopses of individual novels, together with electronic texts of contemporary reviews of those novels; the hope is that this database will eventually extend to include also biographical, bibliographical, and other secondary materials, as well as search engines geared to thematic and other keywords. On the first "level" is CW3, an advanced, peer-reviewed scholarly site containing a large number of these initial materials. On the second "level," is Corinne, a student-centered site that replicates at the student level many of the objectives of the CW3 site. Corinne is based in part of the "Adopt an Author" program, a project at SHU in which students engage in concentrated reading, recovery, and scholarship centered upon individual authors. For a full description of the Sheffield Hallam project, please follow this link.
At Cardiff University, the project takes the form of a fully peer-reviewed international electronic scholarly journal, Cardiff Corvey, whose particular emphasis is upon the literature represented in the Corvey Collection. For a full description of the Cardiff project, please follow this link.
At the University of Nebraska, we will be working to supplement the text- and database projects at Sheffield Hallam. Initially, we will be posting to this website synopses of novels and electronic copies of contemporary reviews, much in the manner of CW3 and Corinne. Like the materials to be found at the Corinne project, these synopses and supplementary materials will be primarily the work of graduate students and advdanced undergraduate students. These two projects will work in roughly parallel fashion, with the objective of complementing one another rather than duplicating each other's efforts. Therefore the two projects will attempt, as far as possible given the nature and scope of individual student and faculty projects, to post materials for different novels rather than for the same ones. Moreover, the project at the University of Nebraska will not be restricted exclusively to women writers but will include materials relating to the literary works of men and women alike from the Romantic era. Materials will be added to this evolving website as they are generated and edited. For quick access to the "Corvey Novels Project" site, please follow this link.
A related website initiative, also based at the University of Nebraska, involves a parallel project featuring collections of poetry — by both women and men — that are part of the Corvey Collection. The materials on this site are, like those for the novels, both descriptive and bibliographical. For most of the volumes of poetry, the entry on the website consists of a descriptive and critical essay about the volume and its contents, a set of transcriptions of contemporary reviews of that volume, bibliographical information about the volume and its author, and a brief biographical sketch of the author. For quick access to the "Corvey Poets Project" site, please follow this link.
Finally, still another website based at the University of Nebraska involves the preparation and mounting of electronic text versions of selected volumes of poetry contained in the Corvey Collection. This site contains primarily full-volume texts of individual volumes of poetry, together with supplementary critical, biographical, and bibliographical materials. For access to the texts and supplementary materials mounted on this website, please follow this link.