Articles — archive

Spring 2025 Update

This update adds 40 born digital letters edited by Electronic Enlightenment’s interns and visiting researchers, the results of ongoing collaborations with Bodleian Libraries Special Collections and beyond. read more…

Phillis Wheatley Peters

Phillis Wheatley’s Poems (1773) and letters combine to form a radical assertion of authorship, identity, and intellect. In this post, Kate Davies explores their significance in eighteenth-century literary and cultural history. read more…

The Plantation Papers of the Barham Family

In this post, Tessa van Wijk, Electronic Enlightenment visiting researcher, introduces the Barham plantation papers, and the intertwined language of economic expedience and ‘benevolent’ ownership in late 18th century slaveholder letters. read more…

Colonial Myth-making and Anti-Scottish Sentiment in Charles Bertram’s Letters

UNIQ+ intern Sophie Dickson explores Anti-Scottish sentiment in the letters of antiquarian forger Charles Bertram, as part of her editorial project on the correspondence between Bertram and famous antiquarian William Stukeley. read more…

Epistolary Form in the Letters from Charles Bertram to William Stukeley

UNIQ+ intern Olivia Flynn writes on the way Charles Bertram’s epistolary style played a role in the perpetuation of his false map of Roman Britain, in his letters to famous antiquarian William Stukeley. read more…

Slavery in the Electronic Enlightenment Collection

Tessa van Wijk, Electronic Enlightenment visiting researcher, shares the outputs of her survey of the language of enslavement across the English and French letters in our collection, and addresses some of the issues that digital projects face when working with topics such as the transatlantic slave trade. read more…

November 2023 Threads — Chess

The Threads series aims to explore the rich topical connections that can be made across the items in the collection of c. 80,000 letters and to illustrate the range of diverse perspectives that can be found on topics of all kinds. Our second post, by Jack Orchard, is on Chess

Françoise de Graffigny, volume 9, 1748–1749

Olivia Russell with a research focus on 18th century French biography, takes us through the key themes, events, and relationships which Madame de Graffigny describes in her letters in 1748 and 1749, as the success of her most famous publication, the Lettres Peruviennes pushes her into a whole new social and intellectual millieu. read more…

Friday Coffee Gathering — August 2023

On 18 August 2023, Electronic Enlightenment gave a talk at the Bodleian Libraries’ Friday Coffee Gathering series at the Weston Library, talking about some of the materials from their Special Collections which we have published in EE. read more...

Beaumarchais and Electronic Enlightenment

Gregory Brown explores the significance of Beaumarchais, his correspondence, and the recently completed publication in EE of the Proschwitz edition of Beaumarchais letters. read more…

March 2022 Featured Letter

The first post in our new Featured Letter series is by Dr Kelsey Rubin-Detlev on Françoise Paule Huguet de Graffigny to François Antoine Devaux, c. Tuesday, 7 October 1738. read more…

March 2022 Threads — Chocolate

The Threads series aims to explore the rich topical connections that can be made across the items in the collection of c. 80,000 letters and to illustrate the range of diverse perspectives that can be found on topics of all kinds. Our first post, by Jack Orchard, is on Chocolate