Google NGram Viewer: Police v. Crime & Domestic Work v. Industrial Work

October 19, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford

The development of police forces progressed drastically throughout the 19th century. This advancement in the police force made me curious as to whether or not police appeared as often as crime in english literature during the 19th century. The first two words I entered into Google NGram Viewer were crime and police.

Crime made a steady appearance in English literature throughout most of the 19th century, showing up much more often than police until about 1880. In 1880, police takes a huge turn and begins popping up a lot more while the appearance of crime decreases slightly. I googled “police in 1880” in an attempt to figure out what caused this spike in the appearance of police. One of the first web results revealed that there was a surge in gun crime in 1880, mainly in London. I also found that urban police departments in the 1880s were developing new methods to keep track of criminals and maintain records about them. Here, it became evident that the word police was beginning to come into English literature more often because surges in violence prompted police to develop more effective strategies in approaching crime and criminals.

I think that crime and police cross paths in 1893 on Google NGram Viewer because many cities developed (or were in the process of doing so) strong police forces after seeing their success in other cites. The growing popularity of police forces suggests that crime in 1893 English literature probably involved police.

The next two phrases that I entered into Google NGram Viewer were domestic work and industrial work. I was curious to see if the change from the domestic industry to the factory/industrial industry was reflected onto the pages of books in English literature.

The graph processed by Google Ngram Viewer shows that industrial work was seldom mentioned in English literature until 1843. After researching industrial work in 1843, I found that between 1843 and 1848, women protested their wage decrease in textile mills (industrial work). Another prominent point on this graph is the period from 1866 to 1869, where the appearance of industrial work spikes and then crosses paths with domestic work. Perhaps the reason for the spike is the invention of dynamite in 1866, and tungsten steel in 1867. Both played an important role in the industrial revolution because dynamite allowed for the clearing of paths (to build on), and tungsten steel was used in new buildings. During such a pivotal period, people probably began writing more about the industrial revolution, which explains this spike in the appearance of industrial work.

In 1875 industrial work became less popular in English literature and then began to climb gradually in 1880. In 1890 we see a peak in the appearance of domestic work. This was when the National American Woman Suffrage Association was formed and the American Federation of Labor declared support for woman suffrage. Female voices were heard and women were able to discuss their desire to vote and to be viewed seriously outside of the domestic workforce. This movement may explain the peak in the appearance of domestic work in English literature.

Altogether, I found that Google NGram Viewer is an effective way of “distant reading.” It allows me to spot trends across many different works by looking at frequency words and phrases in literature. The only change I suggest on this site is the addition of axis titles.

Mary Dellas

Works Cited:

“Detection and the Police.” Detection and the Police. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

“How Safe Was Victorian London?” How Safe Was Victorian London? Ed. Jacqueline Banerjee. N.p., 6 Feb. 2008. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

“National Women’s History Museum.” Education & Resources. NWHM, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Taylor, Emily. “Inventions of the Industrial Revolution.” Time Toast. TimeToast, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Google Ngram Graphs

October 17, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford

My first Google Ngram graph features my favorite word, “prestidigitation,” and other words that relate to it [“illusion” and “magic”] so that I could see which was the most popularly used. I tried 1800-2000 first, but changed it to 1800-1900 thinking that “prestidigitation” would appear more in older texts. Here is the result:

Sadly, I was wrong. “Prestidigitation” might as well be a made-up word as far as Google Books is concerned, and that is disappointing. “Magic” and “illusion” are much more frequently used. However, nothing exceptionally significant can be seen in this graph. “Magic” seems to have a very gradual upward trend, while “illusion” does the same, less frequently. Looking at this graph, it can’t be deciphered whether these words were used in metaphor, figure of speech, or as a subject in the book. Therefore, the words’ existence is the only notable information revealed with this graph.

I can’t help wondering what “lots of books” Google is searching and how reliable this graph is as a source that can be shared with other curious readers. Is the Google Ngram function just an intriguing way to pass the time? What is the vertical axis even showing? If the word “magic” is only in 0.0013589726% of Google Books at it’s highest point on this graph, how can we gauge how many books are being searched for this data? Well, I’m not sure we can, given the next graph I made:

Out of curiosity, I plugged in the three most used words in the English language, expecting to see them all reach 100%, but they only went up to… just over 6%? What about the other 94% of books? I think this graph illustrates the number one problem with the Ngram Viewer: it does not tell you how to use or interpret the information depicted.

Overall, the concept of the Google Ngram Viewer is to see things at a very great distance, but the information shown is too general and vague to be reputable. One must be able to see/signify context to find reliable information. I think Ngrams in an interesting tool, but after reading the articles regarding the tools we use in a negative light, I can’t help but see the flaws all too clearly.

Google Ngram Viewer

October 17, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford

Anthropology has an ugly, racist history. The earliest armchair anthropologists had a tendency to judge and write about other cultures based solely on their own morality and philosophy. The term ‘armchair anthropology’ stems from that idea. People were not actively studying other cultures in the field but rather creating prejudices against them from their imaginations. My strong interest in anthropology and curiosity of early anthropologists’ perceptions of other cultures inspired me to search the words “primitive, culture, and evolution”. The term ‘primitive’ was often used in a negative connotation by early anthropologists to describe “inferior” cultures. Evolutionary theory was a controversial idea in the late 1800s when it gained media coverage. The graph below shows the correlation between these concepts from the span of years 1800-1900.

The term ‘primitive’ was a term that appeared often in early Victorian literature. Many people viewed other cultures and societies and being primitive and below their own culture. Evolution is not a widespread concept until the late 1800s when Darwin reveals his own version of natural selection. From that point forward it rapidly increased in publications. Culture is another term that occurs more frequently in texts with the progression of time. It was interesting to see the small drop from 1800 to about 1825 in regards to culture in literature. ‘Culture’ and ‘primitive’ cross paths around 1870 which is near the time when early anthropologist Edward B. Tylor published, “Primitive Culture”. Tylor’s definition of culture is one of the most recognized contributions to anthropology:

“Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” —Tylor

My second Ngram was more of an experiment just for fun. I was playing around with different terms when I decided to search “love, sex, and desire”. I have always been interested in the way that these terms were discussed in Victorian-era literature. Many classic canonical works are from this time period and focus their plot around love and desire. It was to my understanding that sex was not something necessarily acceptable to talk about casually in public or in literature. The graph below shows the frequency of these three terms in literature from 1800-1900.

Love appears to be a very popular term used in literature of this time period. This was something I anticipated with my own knowledge of Victorian literature. The various dips and curves in the frequency throughout the years struck me as interesting. I wonder what contextual factors led to a decline or rise in the discussion of love. Desire is a term I often associate with love which is why I included it. I was intrigued by how frequent it actually occurred throughout the century. Even though sex was not bluntly talked about in texts, desire and lust may have been more socially appropriate or acceptable terms to describe sexual feelings. The Google Ngram platform is an amazing tool to perform distant reading. It allows one to search using several filters to toggle what they wish to examine. Although it does not give you context, which is a criticism that Underwood talks about in his article, it does provide you with a general understanding of a certain topic, theme, or author that can be analyzed in a multitude of lenses.

The Engineer’s Thumb JuxtaEdition

October 12, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford

Updated: Preview Link

Juxta Editions

October 9, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford

The Man With the Twisted Lip – Digital Edition (Preview link)

(direct link here)

-Erica Gedney

Nicholas Nickleby and other Booktraces

October 5, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford

When we were given the book traces assignment, I immediately looked for one of my favorite books from the 19th century: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens.

The edition in Sojourner Truth Library was published by Macmillan in 1907. I have to say, I was disappointed not to find more markings in this incredible book, but one marking I found was some underlining and, beside it in pencil, the word “EGAD.” I am assuming this word is a a direct response to the conditions of Dotheboys Hall in the 1800s. Dotheboys is a fictional boarding school that Charles Dickens created as an example to show the public in a more persuasive way that boarding schools are terrible places to send your children. In this example on pages 35 and 36, Dickens paints a picture using the characters’ discussion of the demise of a young boy who only had a dictionary to lay upon. The reader seems to have had a very personal response to this image. This reader’s response is what Dickens was aiming for in the readers of his generation. Though Nicholas Nickleby is a long novel with many themes and subjects, bringing attention to the insufferable boarding schools of the time was very important to Dickens when writing this book. There are many more examples of the conditions in the boarding schools. Perhaps the novel was too long for the reader to continue, or maybe this statement was the first to really show what occurs in these schools and the reader became less sensitive to the images. Either way, I thought this was an amusing reaction to find out of very few other markings in the text.

In another book, (I regret to say I didn’t document which – likely because there were no other markings), Amy Louise Cooper signed the flyleaf of the book on June 28th, 1888.

The inscription is barely visible now, but it really makes me wonder how far this book has traveled, and whether it has been read entirely, and, if so, how many times it has been read. A quick Google search of Amy Louise Cooper will bring up quite a few people from the past, but, without a sense of geography, there’s no way of knowing which one this book belonged to.

Searching in the library for book traces was a lot of fun, and I will definitely be looking for more in the future. I really enjoy history when I can interact with it, and seeing the words in the handwriting of previous readers makes reading the novel itself so much more satisfying and interesting. The book traces website is fascinating, and I hope I can contribute more book traces as I find them.

-Brooke Chapman

Mystery of Marginalia: A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before

October 5, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford

After flipping through the brittle pages of countless old books published before the year 1920, I finally came across the book A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1895 by J.M. Dent & Co.

On the top of the first page of the book I found the name of a previous owner. It reads: Oliver B. Seamau, 1948 (I may not have read this name correctly as the handwriting is difficult to make out). I googled this name (and a few variations of it) but found nothing about this man. As for the year 1948, that was the year that Ghandi was assassinated, that the Berlin Airlift began, and that British Railways was created. The book itself is about a group of English voyagers sailing around the world and trading with people from different countries. Digital Defoe, a study and archive of Defoe’s work, calls this book “a work of capitalist pornography, in which clever and enterprising merchants reap astounding profits.” The creation of railways in Britain in 1948 increased national income and supported economic growth. Thus, we know railways in Britain were a significant element in British capitalism, which is the main focus of this book. The owner of this book may not have even made that connection, but it is fascinating to look back in history and make such connections.

In addition to the name and date written on the first page, I also found two newspaper clippings and a magazine article pasted into the book. The two clippings were pasted onto the second page and the article on the second last page. The first clipping on the top of the second page refers to Defoe as a “great literary figure,” and it discusses the excavation and proper reburial of his remains. The second clipping mentions some of Defoe’s other literary works including the ever popular Robinson Crusoe. The owner of the book seems to admire Defoe and have a keen interest in his works.

The article on the second last page is titled Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731). It raves about Defoe and calls him “the first real news reporter” and it claims that he had a “remarkable ‘nose for news.'” This article, like the previous one, reviews many of Defoe’s works (again, Robinson Crusoe). While most of the article praises his different books, one of the paragraphs in the article mentions Defoe’s personal life–he was the son of a butcher whose last name was Foe, a name that Defoe dropped at the age of 40 when he began to sign his works Defoe. Altogether, the owner of this book shows that he is tremendously fascinated by Defoe, his works, and his personal life through marginalia.

Works Cited:

“On Teaching Another Defoe.” Digital Defoe. Digital Defoe, 2009. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

Exploring Ideas of “The Self” in 1902

October 4, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford

For this assignment, I intentionally pursued psychology books of the 19th century, curious to see how people would react to psychological perspectives of the time. Charles Horton Cooley’s “Human Nature and the Social Order” was my book of choice and had some interesting marginalia. The book was published in New York in 1902 by Charles Scribners’ Sons and describes early social psychology and sociological view points. Throughout the entire book, there is underlining of key points, but one particular chapter titled “The Social Self – Various Phases of I,” I found marginalia.

http://www.booktraces.org/book-submission-human-nature-and-the-social-order/

On page 193, the marginalia says “Cut out Cooley’s babies,” following a phrase that had been underlined. The phrase speaks to the idea of the ego of an author slipping through their written work in a way that has no connection to the work itself. The written comment, “Cut out Cooley’s babies” could be a note to the reader to remember to overlook Cooley’s own examples of personal anecdotes slipping into the text at hand. I researched Charles Horton Cooley and could not find anything about him that related specifically to babies. In the Amazon.com review of this book, Cooley is described as a pioneer of sociological views on American culture. His ideas were the catalyst for change in how sociology revolving around the self was approached pedagogically. The passage that is underlined on page 193 suggests that the reader be a critical thinker for not just content, but for the perspectives of authors writing the content.

On page 227 in the same chapter about Various Phases of “I,” the following sentence is underlined:
Thus the passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self.” The marginalia beside the underlining says “self-aggrandizement becomes moral.” This trace of a reader’s idea seems to be the summary of the sentence that resonated most with them. The concept of “self-aggrandizement” means process of promoting oneself as being powerful or important. The marginalia therefore is a synopsis of the idea that as one’s sense of self grows and becomes more attached to one’s morals, self-aggrandizement therefore becomes moral.

Finally, on page 231, at the end of the chapter, the sentenced underlined is “The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.” This description of the self that is underlined is referring to the later idea of the self and the marginalia says “misery of old age.” This summarizes the underlined phrase concisely and quiet honestly as well.

Book Tracing

October 3, 2014 ~ Annie Swafford ~ 1 Comment

Searching through shelves of old books is a thrilling experience. I was unsure of what to expect at first with this project. I questioned whether or not everyone was going to be able to find marginalia or some sort of vintage markings in the books. My plan was to write down call numbers of books that seemed promising – books in the genre of philosophy, history, poetry or religion. I searched through all of the books I had written down with no luck in margin notes or other handwritten surprises. It was then when I decided to navigate the shelves by myself to seek out something interesting.

Alas! Something worth writing about. I should mention that of all the books I carefully thumbed through prior to finding Alexander Pope by Leslie Stephen, there was a lot of underlining. I kept searching through other books until I found some sort of notes written in the margins because that was the most rewarding find. The author of this 1901 biography is Leslie Stephen, a 19^th century British philosopher. This book is about the life of Alexander Pope who was an 18^th century English poet. I tried to examine who wrote the marginalia in order to better understand it. Someone who may have been a philosophy or English student or generally interested in poetry or philosophy may have been the source of the minimal marginal notations. Unfortunately there did not appear to be any cryptic messages or names to decode in the notes. Anything written down in this book seems to have been a confirmation or agreement/disagreement of what was read. Aside from the handwritten cursive margin notes, there was also a vast amount of underlining all throughout the text.

The first bit of marginalia I encountered reads, “money not to protestants”. In this passage the author is describing how Pope had “a conscientious objection” to supporting the Protestant government and saved money himself. The margin note reminds me of something one would write if they were trying to remember a certain point being made to relocate quickly back to that part of the text. Sometimes when I read I benefit from writing down a terse reiteration of the point in the margin so that I can easily find the part in the text I am looking for. Perhaps the person who wrote this was a teacher or explained the book to other people.

The photo above shows a starred sentence and a simple marking of “good” next to a sentence. There is an obvious agreement with a statement and marking of something that is deemed important by whoever scribbled in the book. The sentence that is underlined and has a star in the margin reads, “Waller, Spencer, and Dryden were, he says, his great favourites”. These three English poets were Pope’s earliest inspirations. Stephen writes how Dryden “naturally exercised a predominant influence upon his [Pope’s] own mind”. This sentence is labeled as being “good”. Perhaps the person who wrote the notes admired the work of Dryden also and felt that the influence he had upon Pope was a good thing. Or maybe the person simply enjoyed the flow of the sentence? They may have also agreed that the work of Dryden strongly influenced the work of Pope by comparison.

I attempted to decipher the illegible cursive words in the above photo but had difficulty in doing so. In this passage the author is describing how Pope can be pungent but never simply playful. This line and most of the paragraph about Pope’s personality is underlined. Even though I cannot read exactly what the margin note says, I feel that it is an important part of understanding who the source of margin notes is. If we look at what types of things they marked up it may show a pattern of thinking or a way of teaching. The other margin writings are about Pope’s financial habits, his childhood inspirations, his personality, and in the last photo below his love life. One can surmise that the author of the marginalia was certainly interested in the very personal details of Pope’s life. To try and understand the person writing the short margin notes is a challenge given what they have left. Creating my own perception about who they were given the evidence I have is a tantalizing journey. The further I read into the marginalia, the more I want to figure them out.

Something interesting about this last bit of marginalia is its vertical positioning and rather large size. Compared to the other bits of text this note is much larger and oriented differently in a way that is kind of curious. The adjacent paragraph talks about Pope’s romantic life and how he was too jealous and mean of a man to marry. Why the marginalia is written differently is unbeknownst to me. My guess is that the person either fervently wanted to remember this portion of the text about his love life and wife situation, or it was strikingly important in another way to them. There are other examples of marginal notations and underlining on later pages in the book but they are mostly illegible doodles in comparison to the ones I chose to highlight in this blog post. With all of the evidence in my hands, and a lot of time and thought, I have conjured up an idea of what the person writing all of these notes had in mind. I envision them to be a male, considering the fact that philosophy and poetry of the 19^th century seem to be predominantly male dominated fields. They were most likely either a teacher or a student of philosophy or English, interested in the life and work of Alexander Pope. This person was probably mysterious and cerebral since the majority of their notes were short. They were also probably interested in love and desire. The “wife” marginalia was the largest note in the text and it reflected a particular interest in the writing about love. This analysis is basic and lacking true proof of who the person was, although it was a fun adventure figuring them out myself.

Book Tracing is a unique and interactive experience that allows us to get inside the minds of readers of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It is an opportunity to get lost in a book in a different way. It gives the student the chance to explore early ideas of love, art, history, and other topics. I found this assignment engaging and exciting and had a fun time browsing the library to find something so interesting. Now I will always peruse the shelves of a library with an open eye to catch any torn spines or handwritten titles.