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back to object record
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Transcription of Samuel Simpson's Agreeable Historian,
1746.
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Transcription the the Westmorland chapter from The Agreeable
Historian or Compleat English Traveller, by Samuel Simpson,
published by R Walker, Fleet Street, London, 1746. The text
pages used are in the Wordworth Trust Collection, item
GRMDC:2007.38.60.
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The page size is: wxh, page = 11x16.5cm.
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Transcription of the Cumberland chapter has been made from a
copy of volume 1 of The Agreeable Historian in the National
Library of Scotland, Map Room.
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Notes
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Volume 3 includes counties from N - Norfolk to Y -
Yorkshire. The list on the title page omits Westmorland, but
the text transcribed here has the catchword 'Wiltshire' at
the end of its last page, and is surely from this volume.
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Samuel Simpson declares his sources; William Camden, John
Leland, Thomas Dugdale, John Ogilby, Mr Morgan, and others.
In reading, the text feels as if it had been assembled by
cut and paste in a word processor! grabbing bits of text,
but never melding them properly.
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Transcription and Indexing
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Transcription and indexing follow the pattern used for West
1778, and Otley 1823, in the Lakes Guides project.
Misspellings have been retained as carefully as possible.
Marginals are added; they are not in the original text.
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A catchword at the end of each page is transcribed.
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Italics in this text have been marked with the HTML tags,
MODES does not use these but when downloaded to html pages
they will operate correctly. This has NOT been done in
earlier transcriptions in the Lakes Guides project.
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The Editing Process
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This note might be boring, skip it if you wish.
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Transcribe the whole text into a MODES Format to handle text
(WORDS Format: at a later stage of the project an xml
structure based on the TEI should be used). This is done in
word processor software (Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS is still
being used for its excellent macro facilties). The
transcript is made page by page, each to be a separate MODES
record. The wordprocessor file is a MODES .tag file called
SMP3TXT.tag.
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For some transcriptions the spell checker could be used at
this stage, in the wordprocessor. MODES has no spell
checker. The spelling in early texts is so irregular that
this can be more of a nuisance than a help, and was ommitted
for this text.
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Load into MODES for Windows; the procedure checks the
structure of the records.
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Printout the records, and use these to proof read the
transcription. Also: mark up the text with marginal notes,
which will build a synopsis of the text, and mark up the
text with keywords for each page.
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Go back to the WP version of the transcription to make
corrections. And now add marginal notes the help the reader
follow the text, and to be used later for a contents list, a
synopsis of the text.
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Record keywords for each page, for indexing. This is done by
copying the whole page text into a KEYWORDS field and then
editing this into MODES style keywords, controlling
terminology as necessary. The text spelling of places is
retained, but at the same time the present day placenames
are added, and places referred to indirectly 'the church
...' are identified and a more formal keyword added. The
keyword lists are sorted into alphabetical order, using a WP
macro, to aid checking.
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Keywords are made for placenames as given in the text, and
for the same place using its 'correct' placename as used in
the Old Cumbria Gazetteer. Two entries might be made on the
pattern:-
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preferred name
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quoted name (preferred name)
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eg:-
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Ill Bell
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Hill Bell (Ill Bell)
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Where the two entries look to be too much of a good thing,
common sense is used and the non-standard term is ommited.
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Every time the text is edited you might spot errors of
typing. But: beware of correcting spelling mistakes, check
the original to see whether they are original, or your
typos. Odd spellings are expected and accepted; (sic) is
used sparingly and only where really necessary.
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At this stage the transcript is loaded again into MODES,
overwriting the previous records. The word processor (.tag)
file is no longer the master version and edits from here on
are made in MODES. But: keep the .tag file for another
process; it is renamed SMP3GAZ.tag to guard against misuse.
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The last step is to mine the text for quotable material to
be attached, in Evidence groups, to places in the Old
Cumbria Gazetteer. Where a match to an existing place cannot
be made a new place record is made, giving this text as the
source of its Identification. This process is sometimes
uncertain. Identified places will show in the display of the
relevant text page/s.
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