In my talk I discuss not only the technology I’ve used in building this edition, but also the literary and historical discoveries the project has helped me make about Hawthorne, his audience, and his career. The Scholars’ Lab has posted the talk as a podcast (clicking the link will open iTunes). My talk starts at 28:08, but please listen to Alex’s talk first. The Q&A at the end addresses both talks.

For those of you who check this blog but don’t follow me on twitter, a few items worth your consideration are Brian Croxall’s paper on the real human costs of a sagging job market—delivered in-absentia, because Prof. Croxall couldn’t afford to attend the conference without a job interview—and a followup by Jennifer Howard published by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Though he wasn’t at the convention, Prof. Croxall’s paper was likely the most talked-about paper presented this year, due in large to the twitterers and bloggers who shared and promoted it.

Also worth a look is “Make 10 Louder: the Amplification of Scholarly Communication,” in which Amanda French parses the use of twitter at MLA.

Finally a lighter must-read: Mark Sample collected the many fake “MLA tips” that circulated among the twitter crowd in the weeks leading up to the conference. For job seekers like myself, these provided a welcome distraction from interview preparation, and and important reminder not to take myself too seriously.

Later in the week, a link in Dan Cohen’s twitter feed led me to a Language Log post that mentions the Pennsylvania Civil War Newspapers archive (whew!). I didn’t know this archive, and a quick search there returned yet another witness, from the Lancaster Intelligencer (1 Feb. 1859). This one includes a short editorial preface—these are my favorite witnesses, as they add not only to the corpus of reprintings but also to the cultural narrative surrounding the story.

This project continues to grow exponentially; every new resource discovered returns new results.

In the few posts I’ve added to this development blog, I’ve tried to open the project up in this way. While still in the midst of research, I’ve discussed the genesis of the project, the tools and resources I’m using to research and build the site, and my ongoing textual and technological discoveries. This work has already born fruit.

In a recent post I discussed the online newspaper archives I’ve used to find reprintings of “The Celestial Railroad,” and I speculated about which archives I’ve found most useful. Soon thereafter I received an email from a marketing director at Readex, whose America’s Historical Newspapers I had omitted from the “most useful” list. He politely asked me why, and whether I had any suggestions about how AHN could better serve scholars working on similar projects.

When I replied that I simply hadn’t found much in AHN—no witnesses, and only a few references to the story—he responded with a list of search results he’d found of “The Celestial Railroad,” which included at least one witness and several references I’d not discovered. The problem, it turns out, was that UVA only subscribes to three of the seven available series of Early American Newspapers.

Searching the entire database, he found many that I would never had known existed, because I had no idea that the database I was accessing through UVA’s library was incomplete. Had I not been posting my research, this serendipitous conversation (between an academic and a marketing director, no less) would likewise never have happened.

The story has a happy ending. Readex has generously given me personal access to the entire database for the month of November—not quite as good as UVA subscribing to it, but given how tight both library and personal budgets are right now, I’ll take it. I also understand that worse encounters are possible through open scholarship, including intellectual theft. But this exchange demonstrates that Burton’s ideas can pan out in the ways he imagines. I’ll certainly keep blogging this project, and likely will do so more fervently from now on.

Access Newspapers Archive (http://access.newspaperarchive.com)

Accessible Archives (http://www.accessible.com/accessible/preLog)

America’s Historical Newspapers (http://infoweb.newsbank.com/?db=EANX)

American Periodicals Series Online (http://proquest.umi.com/login)

Gale Group, Nineteenth Century U. S. Newspapers (http://infotrac.galegroup.com)

Google Books (http://books.google.com)

Library of Congress, American Memory Collection (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/snchome.html)

Library of Congress, Chronicling America Collection (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/)

Making of America Project, Cornell University (http://digital.library.cornell.edu/m/moa/)

Making of America Project, University of Michigan (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/)

Bibliography

Periodical reprintings of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Celestial Railroad”

“The Celestial Railroad,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 12, no. 59 (May 1843): 515-523.

* ——, Morning Star (New York) 18, no. 5 (24 May 1843): 20.

* ——, Midnight Cry! (New York) 4, no. 20 & 21 (13 Jul. 1843): 156-159.

——, Signs of the Times and Expositor of Prophecy (Boston) 5, no. 21 (Jul. 1843): 161-164.

——, Cambridge Palladium (Cambridgeport, MA) 1, no. 31 (5 Aug. 1843): 1-2.

——, Christian Advocate and Journal (New York) 17, no. 52 (9 Aug. 1843): 205-206.

* ——, Christian Secretary (Hartford, CT) 22, no. 29 (29 Sep. 1843): 1, 4.

* ——, Christian Watchman (Boston) 24, no. 39 and 40 (29 Sep. and 6 Oct. 1843): 153, 157.

* ——, Scioto Gazette (Chillicothe, OH) 44, no. 2249 (18 Oct. 1843): 1-2.

* ——, Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer (Louisville, KY) 10, no. 42 and 43 (19 and 26 Oct. 1843):

——, Salem Gazette 42, no. 84 (20 Oct. 1843): 1.

——, Salem Mercury 4, no. 43 (25 Oct. 1843): 1.

* ——, Vermont Chronicle (Windsor) 18, no. 44 and 45 (1 Nov. and 8 Nov. 1843): 173-174, 177.

——, Gazette and Courier (Greenfield, MA) 52, no. 2700 (14 Nov. 1843): 1-2.

* ——, Episcopal Recorder (Philadelphia) 21, no. 40 and 41 (23 Dec. and 30 Dec. 1843): 160, 164.

* ——, Republican Compiler (Gettysburg, PA) 26, no. 14 (25 Dec. 1843): 1-2.

——, Baptist Magazine for 1844 (London) 36, series 4, vol. 7 (Jan., Feb. 1844): 9-12, 71-76

* —— (excerpt), Liberator (Boston) 14, no. 11 (15 Mar. 1844): 44.

* ——, Hagers-town Torch Light & Public Advertiser (Hagers-town, MD) 30, no. 21 (21 Mar. 1844): 1.

——, Voices of the True-Hearted (Philadelphia) (Nov. 1844-Apr. 1846): 119-125.

* —— (excerpt), Ohio Observer (Hudson, OH) 21, no. 8 (24 Feb. 1847): 1.

* ——, Non-slaveholder (Philadelphia) 2, no. 10 (Oct. 1847): 228-236.

——, National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York) 8, no. 24 (11 Nov. 1847): 96.

——, The Friend, A Monthly Journal (London) 6, no. 61 (Jan. 1848): 4-8.

* ——, Christian Secretary (Hartford, CT) 26, no. 52 (3 Mar. 1848): 1-4.

——, Vermont Christian Messenger (Montpelier) 4, no. 23 (5 Jun. 1850): 1-2.

* ——, Circular (Brooklyn, NY) 2, no. 44 (16 Apr. 1853): 175-176.

* ——, Littell’s Living Age (Boston) no. 851 (22 Sep. 1860): 740-747.

* ——, Friends’ Intelligencer 17, nos. 39-41 (8, 15, and 22 Dec. 1860): 620-623, 637-639, 652-655.

Other notable reprintings:

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Celestial Rail-road (unauthorized pamphlet, Boston: James F. Fish, 1843).

——, The Celestial Rail-road (unauthorized pamplet, Boston: Wilder & Co., 1843).

[——], as A Visit to the Celestial City, revised by the Committee of Publication of the American Sunday-School Union (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1843).

—— and anon., as The Celestial Rail-road; or, Modern Pilgrim’s Progress: After the Manner of Bunyan. Vividly Representative of the Present-Day Professors of Religion, Bible Examiner, vol. 12 (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thompson, February 23, 1844).

——, in Mosses from an Old Manse (New York: Wiley and Putnamn, 1846).

——, in Prose Writers of America, with a Survey of the History, Conditions, and Prospects of American Literature, ed. Rufus Wilmot Griswold (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1847).

——, The Celestial Rail-road (unauthorized pamphlet, Lowell: D. Skinner, 1847).

* [——] and Salomon Neitz (trans.), as Ein Besuch auf der Eisenbahn nach der Himmlischen Stadt (Philadelphia, 1853).

—— and anon., as The Celestial Rail-road; or, Modern Pilgrim’s Progress: After the Manner of Bunyan. Vividly Representative of the Present-Day Professors of Religion (Boston: J. V. Himes, 1860).

—— and anon., as The Celestial Rail-road; or, Modern Pilgrim’s Progress: After the Manner of Bunyan. Vividly Representative of the Present-Day Professors of Religion, Advent Tracts (Western Series), no. 16 (Buchanan, MI: W. A. C. P. Association, 1867).

——, “A Walk Through Vanity Fair, Hawthorne” (excerpt), in Roses and Holly: A Gift-Book for All the Year (Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1867): 129

*——, “The Celestial Railroad,” in A History of the Church of God, from the Creation to A. D. 1885; Including Especially the History of the Kehukee Primitive Baptist Association, ed. Elder Sylvester Hassell (Middletown, NY: Gilbert Beebe’s Sons, 1886): 951-963.

*——, “The Celestial Railroad,” in The Feast of Fat Things (Middletown, NY: Gilbert Beebe’s Sos, 1890): 93-120.

*——, “The Celestial Railroad,” in Capital Stories by American Authors, Published by the Christian Herald, ed. Louis Klopsch (New York: Bible House, 1895): 13-42.

* [——], as A Visit to the Celestial City, revised by the Committee of Publication of the American Sunday-School Union (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1897).

*——, The Celestial Railroad (Philadelphia: Union Press, 1899).

Omeka is designed to archive and present historical materials, which is, in essence, exactly what I want to do.  Last weekend I attended an Omeka “playdate” at GMU—essentially a day-long training sessi0n—and returned optimistic about the platform as a possible solution for a digital edition like this one.

Before we get there, however, I have to do the bibliographic work—comparing the many editions of the text.  For this I will use Juxta, developed by NINES right here at UVA.  Juxta will allow me to import and immediately see changes between many different versions of “The Celestial Railroad.”  It should help me see lineages of printing, as particular changes propagate through witnesses, and hopefully to notice significant editorial decisions made by particular groups or editors.