The Spenser Project

FAIN: RQ-50293-07

Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)
Joseph F. Loewenstein (Project Director: November 2006 to September 2010)

Preparation, annotation, and digitization of Volumes 1 and 2 of the collected works of early modern British author Edmund Spenser. (36 months)

The Spenser Project has two main components: 1) Oxford University Press will publish "The Collected Works of Edmund Spenser," prose and verse, in three volumes, re-edited from the earliest extant sources in manuscript and print; 2) the editors will construct a digital archive containing our fully edited text, which will be marked up to enable readers to examine textual features and scholarly materials in ways not possible with a print edition. The archive will also contain facsimiles of original materials, including scans of each textual variant. It will serve as a fully searchable research tool and as a teaching tool that presents a wide range of engaging possibilities to the novice user. Taken separately, either part of this project would be a substantial contribution to teaching and research in the humanities; taken together, they address the challenges of editing early modern texts and make the scarce resources of research libraries and archives available to readers everywhere.