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UT Professor Awarded Grant for Digital Humanities

Hilary HavensHilary Havens, associate professor of English, has received a $60,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for The Maria Edgeworth Letters Project. The project is a collaborative digital edition of letters written by Maria Edgeworth, an Anglo-Irish author writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Edgeworth was arguably the most commercially successful novelist of the Regency period in Britain. However, few of her letters have been published in comparison with those of her contemporaries and predecessors like Jane Austen and Horace Walpole.

Havens notes that “Maria Edgeworth was a remarkable woman, and her letters reveal her interests in science, abolitionism, and Anglo-Irish politics.  This project will lead to new perspectives on Edgeworth’s accomplishments and on life during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Ireland and the United Kingdom.”

Edgeworth’s work was diverse, including educational materials for parents, stories for children, pieces for both laboring-class and elite audiences, and novels. Her novels, set in Ireland, served as a critique of Anglo-Irish relations following the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

In addition to providing important context to her work, Edgeworth’s letters also add richness to existing narratives of key literary and historical figures, including Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, and Elizabeth Inchbald. The letters span a series of critical historical events including the French invasion of Ireland, the Act of Union and its aftermath, and the great Irish famine. They also reveal Edgeworth’s interest in nineteenth-century scientific discourse, as well as her modern opinions on issues of race and inclusion.

The grant will fund database and website design, and will lead to the creation of a fully searchable database of Edgeworth’s transcribed letters.  Scholars, students, and members of the public will be able to participate in the project beginning the week of May 23 by transcribing her letters through the Zooniverse platform.

Havens will work in collaboration with researchers at Wake Forest University, Texas A&M, and Xavier University to create the first digital repository of Edgeworth’s letters.