Editorial principles
What is EE?
Electronic Enlightenment has as its foundation major printed editions of correspondence of the early modern period. From the correspondence itself, the supporting critical apparatus and additional research carried out by EE, we have developed a set of information categories, from dates and names to textual variants — indeed, any piece of information that contributes to our understanding of the documents. The data captured within these information categories enriches EE as a digital academic resource, by creating an intricate network of connections between the documents.
Not all editions provide information matching all of EE's categories, and there is great variation in the levels of information provided: one edition may provide one-sentence biographical notes to only the most easily identifiable authors and recipients, while another may provide rich biographical entries, going out of the way to identify even the most obscure people. One of EE's ongoing tasks is to fill in missing information within the whole range of information categories. Often this will mean that we must generate the necessary information, interconnecting editions and documents in new ways. If you would like to help and contribute a link or relevant information, please see our contributors section.
EE as an edition
To date, most of the content of EE has been provided by printed editions of correspondences from academic presses worldwide. Nevertheless, it should not be viewed simply as an aggregation of these editions: rather it is a database of individual letters and correspondents that can be searched or browsed as a complete collection. This is one of the great strengths of EE.
We believe EE is unique in the way it brings together disparate editions from publishers worldwide and aims to create from them a single coherent resource. The extent of the editions included ranges from one volume to fifty, with the editor of each making their own decisions as to how the correspondence should be presented. Therefore one guiding editorial principle of EE has been standardization — whether it be of the display of the actual documents, the content of types of notes, or the location of particular information. The added value of EE thus includes the full searchability created across this complex growing resource.