“Three Thomases”: Tres Thomae, a Catholic work by Thomas Stapleton
Here is another text-searchable PDF file of an early modern text. Here's the link. This is the second (1612) edition of Thomas Stapleton's account of the lives of Thomas the Apostle, Thomas Beckett and Thomas More. The first edition was published in Douai in 1588. Somewhat neglected these days, Stapleton was a leading Catholic controversialist…
ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚA [Basilika]. The Works of King Charles the Martyr
Another text-searchable PDF file of a seventeenth-century text. Here's the link. This is the second (1687) edition of a folio publication, over 700 pages long, divided into two parts, with the option of viewing further subdivisions for convenience / speed of downloading. Although the book is billed as being Charles's own work, John Gauden, Bishop…
Protestant / Catholic polemic: Lucius Cary (Viscount of Falkland), Thomas White and William Chillingworth
The 1660 edition of Lucius Cary's Discourse of Infallibility (first published in 1646 ) is my latest book scan. There's more interest these days in Cary's mother, Elizabeth (1585–1639), the first woman writer known to have written a play. Elizabeth Cary's literary career isn't really relevant here, but she plays a part in the complex…
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford
Wentworth's path from Lord Deputy of Ireland to the executioner's axe is well enough known in its broad outlines, but with so many twists and nuances that it is hard to evaluate. The decisive change in his fortunes came when the king, Charles I, recalled him from Ireland and charged him with putting down the…
Digitizing Early Modern Suffering
I finally splashed out on a CZUR overhead scanner, which I picked up at a substantial discount from the regular market price. I strongly recommend anyyone to get one of these. Forget that dishwasher you were saving up for, or the new hairdryer you've been promising yourself; for real consumer satori nothing beats an overhead…
Rejoice! for eebo tcp phase 2 is now in the public domain
Here it is! Something tangible and irrefutable, something that makes 2021 better than 2020 (not that that would be hard!), something to cheer the spirit and warm the cocckles of the heart. Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership Phase 2 is now in the public domain, bringing 60,331 early modern works in text-searchable form…
Using the Early English Books Online and Text Creation Partnership Databases
(This post contains the substance of a presentation I gave at the Annual Conference of the Shakespeare Society of Japan in October, 2014.) For those who are not familiar, here is an introduction to the use of the Early English Books Online database (EEBO): EEBO requires a log-in, but many - if not most -…