Project Background

EEBS is a product of Boston College’s graduate-level capstone class, “Digital Humanities as Public Scholarship,” created in the spring of 2023. The author, Elspeth Currie, had come across a list in The Great Historical, Geographical and Poetical Dictionary (1694) while researching Anne Wentworth Watson, Lady Rockingham and became curious about what these lists could tell us about early modern England.

Books Involved

EEBS’s database is sourced from subscriber lists from twelve books published in England between 1617 and 1698, listed here with their short title. Some are avaible for free online, but digital facsimiles of each can be found on Early English Books Online, hosted by ProQuest.

John Minsheu, The Guide into Tongues (London: John Browne, 1617), ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

John Ogilby, trans., The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro Translated, Adorn’d with Sculpture, and Illustrated with Annotations (London: Thomas Warren, 1654).

William Somner, Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum (Oxford: William Hall, 1659).

John Ogilby, trans., Homer His Iliads Translated, Adorn’d with Sculpture and Illustrated with Annotations by John Ogilby (London: James Flesher, 1660).

John Ogilby, trans., Homer, His Odysses Translated, Adorn’d with Sculpture, and Illustrated with Annotations by John Ogilby, Esq, (London: Thomas Roycroft, 1665).

Thomas Mace, Musick’s Monument, or, A Remembrancer of the Best Practical Musick, Both Divine and Civil, That Has Ever Been Known to Have Been in the World (London: T. Ratcliffe and N. Thompson, 1676).

Anonymous, The English Atlas (Oxford: Moses Pitt, 1680).

John Milton, Paradise Lost A Poem in Twelve Books (London: Miles Flesher, Richard Bently, and Jacob Tonson, 1688), ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Anthony à Wood, Athenæ Oxonienses an Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who Have Had Their Education in the Most Ancient and Famous University of Oxford (London: Thomas Bennet, 1691).

Louis Moréri and Edmund Bohun, The Great Historical, Geographical and Poetical Dictionary (London: Henry Rhodes, Luke Meredith, John Harris, and Thomas Newborough, 1694).

John Dryden, trans., The Works of Virgil Containing His Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis: Adorn’d with a Hundred Sculptures (London: Jacob Tonson, 1697).

John Browne, Myographia Nova, or, A Graphical Description of All the Muscles in the Humane Body (London: Thomas Milbourn, 1698).

Process and Tools

These books were identified from searches through Proquest’s Early English Books Online, references in secondary scholarship, and entries in The Book Subscription Lists: A Revised Guide, put together by Peter John Wallis and the Book Subscriptions List Project. EEBO provided digital facsimiles and some transcriptions of the texts.

After identification, Elspeth used Google Documents OCR function to make initial transcriptions of any texts lacking one. She edited these and the existing transcriptions from EEBO before using Microsoft Excel to create the database. Tableau provided the tools to make data visualizations.

Rights Statement

The home page banner image is a woodcut decoration from the ballad "A Warning-piece for all Wicked Livers." Image sourced from the English Broadside Ballad Archive. National Library of Scotland, Crawford.EB.1200, EBBA 34085. | In compliance with Fair Use.

The banner image on other pages is a selection of the list from John Minsheu's The Guide Into Tongues.

As one of Boston College's Digital Humanities Projects, EEBS makes use of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0.