Phases of development

Our objective is to make available on our site all the letters written by Elizabeth Montagu. We do not currently plan to include the letters from her correspondents but as a result of the funding we provided, the Huntington Library Archive has made digitised versions of these manuscripts available at https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p16003coll18/id/28660/rec/2

Facsimiles of all of the letters written by Elizabeth Montagu that are held by the Huntington Library can now be accessed in high resolution through our site via the Names, Correspondents or Calendar tabs.
We have set up an internship programme and started the process of transcribing all these manuscripts, and the transcriptions will be progressively made available on our site. Our interns are currently working on the letters from Montagu to her great friend Elizabeth Carter.
We are adding a Search function that will enable all the transcribed letters to be searched for personal names, locations or keywords.
In parallel to this, our Section Editors are working on batches of the letters, to add detailed annotations and biographical and other links, together with a critical introduction to each correspondent. We have completed editing the letters to Hester Thrale Piozzi and James Beattie, and will shortly add the letters to Mary Richardson Robinson, Frances Boscawen, Mary Anstey, Messenger Monsey and Lord Kames, as well as initial selections of letters to the Duchess of Portland and George Lyttelton.
We have provided an alphabetical list of names of all the people mentioned in the letters, together with dates and places of birth and death, and links to external biographical sources. We shall continue to add biographical information as the work progresses.
We have also added a Family Trees section and a list of Locations mentioned in the letters, which are linked to geo-location maps. We are progressively adding detailed histories and descriptions of the locations most closely associated with Elizabeth Montagu and her family.
We hope our readers will recognise that the site will for some considerable time represent work-in-progress, and would welcome any suggestions for corrections and improvements, by email to digitalhumanities@swansea.ac.uk.

Please follow our Twitter feed @Montagu_Letters for regular updates.

Please note that all dates and location information are provisional, initially taken from the library and archive catalogues. As our section editors continue to work through the material we will update our database and the changes will be reflected across the edition.

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