About the Grub Street Project
The Grub Street Project, a digital edition of London in the long eighteenth century, was established in 2005 by Allison Muri. At that time digital publishing was still seen very much as a new "Grub Street," and all too often critiqued as a specious and ephemeral form. The name was also inspired in no small part by Pat Rogers' Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture first published in 1972. The goal of the project is to visualize the literary, spatial, and cultural history of London. This includes mapping the city's print trades and other trades, its imagined literary representations, and its real histories. Mapping such locations and events centuries later, however, presents no small challenge. In 1704 Jonathan Swift complained of the seemingly ephemeral literary productions in London where vast numbers of written works were "hurried so hastily off the scene, that they escape our memory, and delude our sight" like a topography of ever-changing clouds. Today, the obstacles to posterity that Swift condemned resurface in any attempt to study the relationships between 18th-century printed materials, texts, authors, printers, booksellers, publishers, and readers. For example, while we might be able to determine where a book was printed or "to be sold," patterns of production, selling, buying, and reading are harder to see. Moreover, the ephemeral nature of London's topography itself presents difficulties for the researcher. Mapping booksellers and printers continues to be a work in progress. The notorious Grub Street is no more, and traces of the printers' premises there exist today only as vague addresses such as "neere the lower pumpe" or "neer Cripple-Gate." High-resolution "zoomable" maps from 18th-century prints associated with a database of bibliographical and topographical data, trades indexes, and literary texts afford new possibilities for not only seeing the relationships between people, trades, book production, and dissemination of ideas, but also for seeing the topographies of creative imagination.
Allison Muri, University of Saskatchewan: Designer, Director, and Editor, 2005–present
Editorial Board
Frans de Bruyn, University of Ottawa
Nicholas Hudson, University of British Columbia
Thomas Keymer, University of Toronto
Laura Mandell, Texas A&M University
Donald W. Nichol, Memorial University of Newfoundland
David Oakleaf, University of Calgary
Carol Percy, University of Toronto
Pam Perkins, University of Manitoba
Paul F. Rice, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Leslie Ritchie, Queen's University
Pat Rogers, University of South Florida
Laura Runge, University of South Florida
Peter Sabor, McGill University
Student Contributions
Heather Torvi (MA, English), 2019– : research project: Revealing the Effects of Fake News in the 18th Century: Henry Fielding’s Critique of the Newspaper Trade in The Coffee-House Politician; Research Assistant, 2019–
Banjo Olaleye (PhD, English), 2016– : research project: Ignatius Sancho's London: A Social Reading of Space and Identity in Eighteenth Century London; Research Assistant, 2017–
Rodrigo Yanez (PhD, English), 2015– : research project: Place and autobiographical self-fashioning: literary geography and digital mapping in James Boswell's London Journal 1762–1763; Research Assistant, 2017–
James Yeku (PhD, English), 2014, 2017: Research Assistant
Benjamin Neudorf (BA / MA, English), 2011–14: research, usability testing, co-editor of The London Spy
Catherine Nygren (BA / MA, English), 2010–13: research, usability testing, co-editor of The Dunciad Variorum
Mike Sheinin (BA, Computer Science), 2012: programming, usability testing
Justin Gowen (BA, Computer Science), 2011: programming
Jordan Rudek (MA, English), 2011: Ned Ward research
Edison del Canto (PhD, Interdisciplinary Studies), 2010: conceptual design, The Four Kings of Canada
Meshon Cantrill (MA, English), 2008: research and development of a concept for "The London Game"
Holly Luhning (PhD, English), 2005: data entry, Eliza Haywood research
Jon Bath (PhD, English), 2005: prototyping, TEI markup
Programming
Xiaohan Zhang, Web App Developer, 2012–2015
Publications related to the Grub Street Project
Muri, Allison. "Alexander Pope’s Dunciad and Ned Ward’s London Spy: Experiments in Text Visualization." Lumen 41 (2022): 205–34.
Muri, Allison, Catherine Nygren, and Benjamin Neudorf. “The Grub Street Project: A Digital Social Edition of London in the Long 18th Century.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (March 2016).
Muri, Allison. “Beyond GIS: On Mapping Early Modern Narratives and the Chronotope.” Digital Studies / Le champ numérique 6 (2015-2016) Beyond Accessibility: Textual Studies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Brent Nelson and Richard Cunningham.
Salt, Joel, Ronald Cooley, and Allison Muri. "Electronic Scholarly Editing in the University Classroom: an Approach to Project-based Learning." Digital Studies / Le champ numérique 3.1 (2012).
Muri, Allison. “Graphs, Maps, and Digital Topographies: Visualizing The Dunciad as Heterotopia.” Lumen 30 (2011): 79-98.
Muri, Allison. “Digital Natives or Digital Strangers? Teaching the Eighteenth Century Online, from Ctrl-F to Digital Editions.” Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe & His Contemporaries 2.1 (Fall 2010).
Muri, Allison. “The Grub Street Project: Imagining Futures in Scholarly Editing.” In Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come. Ed. Jerome McGann, with Andrew Stauffer, Dana Wheeles, and Michael Pickard (Houston, TX: Rice University Press, 2010), 25-58.
Muri, Allison. “The Technology and Future of the Book: What a Digital ‘Grub Street’ Can Tell us About Communications, Commerce, and Creativity.” In Producing the Eighteenth-Century Book: Writers and Publishers in England, 1650–1800. Ed. Laura Runge and Pat Rogers. University of Delaware Press, 2009. 235-50.
Citations of the Grub Street Project
Baines, Paul. “Grub Street.” In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave, 2022. 828–38.
Baird, Ileana. Data Visualization in Enlightenment Literature and Culture. Springer Nature, 2021.
Baker, William. “Bibliography, Textual Criticism and Reference Works.” In The Year’s Work in English Studies volume 99. Oxford University Press, 2020. 1267–1407.
Booth, Alison. Homes and Haunts: Touring Writers' Shrines and Countries. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Bourque, Kevin. “Mapping the Literature Survey Locating London in British Literature I.” In Teaching the Literature Survey Course: New Strategies for College Faculty (Teaching and Learning in Higher Education), ed. James M. Lang, Gwynn Dujardin, and John A. Staunton, John A. West Virginia University Press, 2018.
Darnton, Robert. “The Grub Street Project: A Cautionary Tale.” Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come: Proceedings of the Mellon Foundation Online Humanities Conference at the University of Virginia, March 2–-28, 2010, ed. Jerome McGann. Rice University Press, 2010. 59–64.
Donaldson, Christopher, Sally Bushell, Ian N. Gregory, Joanna E. Taylor, and Paul Rayson. ”Digital Literary Geography and the Difficulties of Locating ‘Redgauntlet Country.’” Studies in Scottish Literature, volume 42, issue 2, 2016. 174–83.
Gailey, Amanda. “Editing in the Age of Automation.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language volume 54, number 3, Linguistics and Literary Studies: Computation and Convergence. Essays from the 2010 Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies, Fall 2012. 340–56.
Garcia, John J. “Networks.” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (University of Pennsylvania Press) volume 16, number 4, Fall 2018.
Giuffrida, Milena, Paola Italia, Simone Nieddu, and Desmond Schmidt. “From Print to Digital: A Web Edition of Giacomo Leopardi’s Idilli.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities volume 36, supplement 1, June 2021. i23–i36.
Hill, Mark J. “Invisible Interpretations: Reflections on the Digital Humanities and Intellectual History.” Global Intellectual History volume 1, number 2. 130–50.
Hones, Sheila. Literary Geography. Taylor & Francis, 2022.
Huet, Hélène. “Mapping Decadence: From a Hunch to a Web Site.” Journal of Map & Geography Libraries: Advances in Geospatial Information, Collections & Archives volume 11, issue 1, 2015. 80–90.
Justin, J., and Nirmala Menon. “Spatial Hypertexts or Hypermaps: A Proposal for using Maps as Hypertexts in Geo-Spatial Archives.” Journal of Map & Geography Libraries: Advances in Geospatial Information, Collections & Archives volume 19, issue 1-2, 2023, 55–71.
Keeran, Peggy, and Jennifer Bowers. Literary Research and the British Eighteenth Century: Strategies and Sources. Rowman & Littlefield, 2013.
Khatib, Randa E. L., ed. Special Issue, Spatial Humanities. Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, volume 44, issue 3, 2021.
⸻, and Marcel Schaeben. “Why Map Literature? Geospatial Prototyping for Literary Studies and Digital Humanities.” Digital Studies/le Champ Numérique volume 10, number 1, 2020.
Klein, Julie Thompson. Interdisciplining Digital Humanities: Boundary Work in an Emerging Field. University of Michigan Press, 2015.
Lang, Anouk. “Canadian Magazines and Their Spatial Contexts: Digital Possibilities and Practical Realities.” International Journal of Canadian Studies (University of Toronto Press) volume 48, 2014. 213–32.
Lupton, Christina. Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018.
Mandell, Laura. “Non-Consuming Relevance: the Grub Street Project.” In Online Humanities Scholarship: The Shape of Things to Come: Proceedings of the Mellon Foundation Online Humanities Conference at the University of Virginia, March 26–28, 2010, ed. Jerome McGann. Rice University Press, 2010.
Martin, Kimberley. “Clio, Rewired: Propositions for the Future of Digital History Pedagogy in Canada.” The Canadian Historical Review (University of Toronto Press) volume 101, issue 4, December 2020.
McGann, Jerome. “On Creating a Usable Future.” Profession 2011. Modern Language Association, 2014. 182–95.
Mitchell, Peta. “Literary Geography and the Digital: The Emergence of Neogeography.” In Robert Tally, Jr., ed., The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space. Routledge, 2017. 85–94.
Mostern, Ruth, and Elana Gainor. “Traveling the Silk Road on a Virtual Globe: Pedagogy, Technology and Evaluation for Spatial History.” DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly volume 7, issue 2, 2013.
Nantke, Julia, and Frederik Schlupkothen. Annotations in Scholarly Editions and Research: Functions, Differentiation, Systematization. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2020.
Perenic, Ursˇka. “An Overview of Literary Mapping Projects on Cities: Literary Spaces, Literary Maps and Sociological (Re)conceptualisations of Space.” Neohelicon volume 41, 2014. 13–25.
Roland, Meg. Mirror of the World: Literature, Maps, and Geographic Writing in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Routledge, 2021.
Shannon, Mary L. “The Multiple Lives of Billy Waters: Dangerous Theatricality and Networked Illustrations in Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture.” Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film (Sage Journals) volume 46, number 2, 2019. 161–89.
Schön, Theresa. A Cosmography of Man: Character Sketches in “The Tatler” and “The Spectator.” Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2020.
Schriebman, Susan, Laura Mandell, and Stephen Olsen. “Evaluating Digital Scholarship: Introduction.” Profession 2011. Modern Language Association, 2014. 265–93.
Sönmez, Margaret J-M. Defoe and the Dutch: Places, Things, People. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
Smyth, Adam. “Introduction.” In Adam Smyth, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of the Book in Early Modern England. Oxford University Press, 2023.
Tambling, Jeremy. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Springer Nature, 2022.
Thomas, Leah. “Cartographic and Literary Intersections: Digital Literary Cartographies, Digital Humanities, and Libraries and Archives.” Journal of Map & Geography Libraries: Advances in Geospatial Information, Collections & Archives (Taylor & Francis), 2013.
van Lit, L.W.C. Among Digitized Manuscripts. Philology, Codicology, Paleography in a Digital World. BRILL, 2019.