Entry: For my entry first I went to the “Publications” tab and then chose “Journals, Magazines and Newspapers” (to make my research more interesting and relevant to my major) and finally selected ‘The Times.’ There were many articles about The Times but I read the first one (Peter Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, 1850).
What I learned: What I found interesting right away in this article was how the first daily paper in London actually began with one man, John Bill, who, “at the King’s Printing House in Black Friars, printed the proclamations of the reign of Charles II. [The] first London Gazette, [was] established in that reign.” In 1770 the location of the publication moved to its current location where it transformed into the daily it is today in 1788. “The Times of Tuesday, Nov. 29th, 1814, was the first work ever printed by a mechanical apparatus, and the first newspaper printed by steam.” The article also breaks down the starting and current advertising rates, though I didn’t completely understand some of the symbols used. It was cool to see how the paper evolved from its very beginning to a paper that it distributed worldwide.
In the Sherlock Holmes stories this is where John Watson hears about Sherlock for the first time as he is looking for a flatmate to move in with. Gaining insight from the Historical Eye webpage I learned a lot about this area in the past and how it is like today. One of the main attractions of Piccadilly Circus is the Burlington house, which still remains today the home of the Royal Academy as it did during Victorian times. A site for entertainment in 1812 was the Egyptian Hall which is no longer there today. The area in general was a place for shopping and entertainment. The London Pavillion was a variety theatre which was very popular during the 1800’s. In the middle of Piccadilly Circus still remains the bronze Shaftesbury Memorial fountain made by Alfred Gilbert. The Historical Eye gave a very brief overview of the area, but it was helpful for finding more information because I knew what to look for.
I then used the British History online database and found more information about the area along with more pictures. From the pictures, this area seemed very busy and loud. It reminds me of an older version of Times Square in New York, with all the illuminated advertising and signs everywhere. According to the British History online database there was a lot of controversy about these illuminated advertisements because the lights could cause danger to drivers. Laws were created due to the new additions of lights to advertisements. Due the the lavishness of the lights and the types of buildings, it can be concluded that the area was fairly well to do and could afford to have electricity and the means to keep all the storefronts and entertainment businesses up and running.
‘The rebuilding of PiccadillyCircus and the Regent Street Quadrant’, Survey of London: volumes 31 and 32: St James Westminster, Part 2 (1963), pp. 85-100. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41456&strquery=piccadillycircus Date accessed: 10 November 2014.
For this project I chose to look closely at Covent Garden which is a district in London that is mentioned in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When Mr. Henry Baker approaches Holmes about the advertisement for the missing hat, he provides Holmes with valuable information for further investigation of the missing blue carbuncle that leads him to Covent Garden. Below is a screenshot of the area as seen on Victorian Google Maps:
After navigating all of the various digital archives to further research Covent Garden, I found the Charles Booth Online Archive and the British History archive to be particularly useful. The other archives were either difficult to navigate or did not offer information that I found interesting enough to connect with the story. The Historical Eye archive failed to incorporate a type of search feature which would have been helpful in my research. This was one flaw of the archive in my opinion. The Old Bailey Online archive discussed criminal and law records which are interesting yet not something I wanted to discuss in this example. The Locating London archive only seemed to provide me with a map of where Covent Garden was located around this time period. It did not yield much qualitative information that I was seeking.
The British History Online archive is a great digital tool with a lot of rich data. It has a very sophisticated search engine that lets you precisely refine your results to find anything that you are looking for in the context of all British history. On this archive I was able to quickly search for Covent Garden and be presented with a lot of history about it. I discovered that the late 1800s was the greatest period of expansion in the entire history of the market. People could visit the market for fruits, produce, flowers, and other goods. The history provided by the archive was able to paint a nice image in my head of what Covent Garden looked like during the turn of the 20th century. Having that imagery allows me to gain a better understanding of the Holmes story and how society must have operated during this time period.
The map of Covent Garden on the Charles Booth Online Archive shows the range of poverty and wealth in the area circa 1898-99. As you can see on the screenshot below, this district of London was comprised mostly of middle class, well-to-do people. There are some poor and very poor areas interspersed throughout the district as well as a few places that are of the lowest class. This map and archive allows the researcher to develop an understanding of class and location in the late Victorian era which is valuable when comparing to the Sherlock Holmes story. It provides context for the setting which is a marketplace. It makes sense to the story that Covent Garden was mostly middle-class at the time of the publication of this story because it was a shopping area where the goose was sold.
Before I created my own word cloud, I read the two blog posts regarding this visualization aid, and although one went more in depth about different websites where word clouds can be made, the blog “Word Clouds Considered Harmful” (well, the title says it all) had a very negative attitude toward these fun and light-hearted artistic creations. However, ironically enough, when I was searching for the definition of a word cloud in Google it came up as “An image composed of words used in a particular text or subject, in which the size of each word indicates its frequency or importance.” I found this interesting because in the negative post about word clouds Harris talks about how the size of a certain word should not emphasize the importance of it; but Google seems to think otherwise. Although I do not necessarily agree with Harris, I do believe that before people engage in making word clouds, they should read and understand the text that is being artistically manipulated. With this being said, more people would stray away from using only a word cloud to understand texts, and focus more on comparing their recent finds along with the finds of a visual aid.
Regardless of everyone’s opinions on word clouds and the significance in making them, I actually enjoyed customizing my word cloud for my favorite Sherlock Holmes story, A Scandal in Bohemia. At first I had trouble with Wordle (because of Java) and I decided to try Voyant. However, after seeing what my word cloud looked like with Voyant, I realized I was more of a Wordle fan. When I created my first word cloud with Voyant, many of the words that probably should have been emphasized, were not. For example, Holmes, Adler, and women were not even included in the word cloud. Secondly, I found that a lot of common words had the most emphasis and when I tried to take those out, it didn’t go as planned. Therefore, I tried Wordle again and after downloading Java, I copied and pasted my text and created the word cloud pictured below.
Here is my word cloud with my customized color palette and font. Do you think Holmes would be proud?
As I played around with Wordle, I found that I enjoyed being able to customize my visualization based on my preferences. As I kept clicking ‘randomize’, I gained insight on what shape I wanted my word cloud to be, the positioning of words, the color scheme, and the font. After it was all said and done, I chose to create my own color palette because I felt like the basic palettes were overused-so why not create my own? When I created my palette I chose dark colors so that words would clearly standout. My colors ranged from different shades of purple, a dark blue, a red wine, and a dark green, just because I found those most appealing. After choosing the specific colors I wanted, I chose to view the different fonts. After viewing various ones, I wound up using a font that made all the words neat and legible.
When I started to analyze my word cloud based on my prior knowledge from reading A Scandal in Bohemia, and understanding what word clouds are used for, I pretty much agreed with the words that mad most emphasis in the word cloud, versus the words that did not. For example, Holmes was obviously the most emphasized because he is a main character not only in this story, but also in all Sherlock Holmes stories (no pun intended). Another word that had emphasis was photograph. As readers know, a major theme in the story is the lost picture and is the main cause of stress for the king or ‘majesty’ (also emphasized), so it makes sense that it is one of the larger words. One thing that I did find interesting was how woman was not emphasized. I understand that ‘woman’ may not have been said a lot in the story, however it is a major representation of what Holmes thinks Adler to be and readers should know of regardless.
What did you all think of word clouds? Yay or nay?
Using the Voyant tool, I made a word cloud of Sherlock Holmes’s adventure, “Scandal in Bohemia.” It is unfortunate that the tool does not utilize color to distinguish word frequency or other significant word trends because that would have allowed for some interesting insights. In any case, the word size was telling enough to extract some Sherlockian observations about the context of the story. In my generated word cloud ( http://voyant-tools.org/tool/Cirrus/?corpus=1411164560979.4726&query=&stopList=1411165833459tu&docIndex=0&docId=d1411099477875.99b8b096-b231-7094-d527-8b986fefb364), the most to least significant elements of the story are apparent from larger to smaller size. ‘Holmes’ appears 47 times, ‘photograph’ appears 21 times, ‘king’ (17), ‘majesty’ (16), ‘irene’ and ‘adler’ (13), and ‘woman’ (12). It’s no surprise that these four aspects of the story surface most frequently and the the photograph can be considered a tertiary character of the story because it is crucial to the reveal and the idea of ‘the woman.’
What I took most note of, however, was the lack of Watson’s name. Holmes is obviously the largest word, front and center, but Watson is notably smaller and on the outskirts of the cloud. His name appears 6 times, half as many times as the mention of Irene Adler’s name. Though this does make sense because he is the narrator and therefore is primarily mentioned in the first person in the text, I expected to see more of his name when Sherlock addresses him in conversation. A conclusion from this ‘where’s Watson’ is that this is a subtle show of Sherlock’s narcissism. Holmes’s heightened perception and memory are arguably the biggest parts of the story, but his lack of addressing Watson – our narrator and the right hand man – by name is a way of noticing Sherlock’s ego from a quantitative perspective.
Do you want to learn how to read 10,000 books at a time? Create maps of crimes in Sherlock Holmes’s London? This course provides an introduction to digital humanities (DH)–the practice of using digital tools for scholarly purposes in all majors–including its different uses, methodologies, tools, and projects. You will learn different DH techniques, study existing DH projects, and try these techniques yourself in weekly labs. We’ll use DH techniques to examine Sherlock Holmes short stories alongside Victorian court records, coroners’ reports, and maps of crimes in London. While the in-class material will focus on 19th century London, your final group projects can be more immediately applicable to your own major or academic interests. In lieu of taking exams and writing traditional papers, we will create digital exhibits, write blog posts, share our work through social media, and collaborate with students and scholars from around the world. All majors are welcome. Computer literacy is helpful, but no programming experience is required.
Student Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the semester, students should be able to
Have an interdisciplinary understanding of 19th Century London
Identify, use, and discuss different DH methodologies and tools
Explain the pros and cons of the different methodologies and tools
Identify and explain key DH terms
Create projects using the tools covered in lab
Articulate what makes a DH project successful or unsuccessful
Use social media to engage with the larger DH community of scholars
Come up with research questions that can be answered with DH tools and methodologies and come up with the idea for tools and methodologies in order to answer research questions
Work collaboratively in groups to create a project that relates to their own research interests
Course Materials:
Every week will focus on a different DH methodology will include a discussion-based class and a hands-on lab when you will practice the tools we have been discussing. All readings with URLs can be found online and through the course website.
