Conditions Governing Use

This collection contains some in-copyright material. Visit our Permissions and Publishing page (https://www.library.virginia.edu/special-collections/services/publishing) for more information about use of Special Collections materials. The library can provide copyright information upon request, but users are responsible for making their own determination about lawful use of collections materials.

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research use.

Original digital media (floppy disks, zip disks, thumb drives) and born-digital files cannot be handled directly by patrons. Please contact Special Collections via our online Reference Request form, https://small.library.virginia.edu/services/reference-request, to request access to these materials. Please be aware that additional actions may be required to make these items available. Items will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis before access can be made. Depending on the request size, making them available may take some time.

If you are interested in viewing the digital media in this collection, please fill out this Reference Request form.

https://small.library.virginia.edu/services/reference-request

Preferred Citation

MSS 15427 Jerome McGann papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Jerome McGann Papers were donated by Jerome McGann December 19, 2020. It was accessioned by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library on June 24, 2021 (2021-0074).

Processing Information

This finding aid was created for creating access to recent and future additions.

This finding aid only describes the most recently acquired part(s) of this collection. Box numbers pick up where the last set left off so that box numbers are not repeated.

Duplicate physical and digital scans were removed and discarded. Some samples of scans remain.

Content from digital cartridges (disks 132-134) was not transferred due to lack of necessary equipment.

All or some of the content from disks 44, 66, 75, 84, 131, 182, 186, 192, 196, 198, and 199 was not transferred due to: inability to mount; password encryption; inability to read specific files.

Biographical / Historical

Jerome J. McGann (born 1937 ) is an American literary scholar , textual critic , and one of the foundational figures in the digital humanities. He served as the John Stewart Bryan University Professor at the University of Virginia and has published extensively on Romantic literature, textual theory, and editorial practice. He has edited and authored major contributions to Rossetti studies. McGann's scholarship, especially on Lord Byron and Dante Gabriel Rossetti , has helped redefine the relationship between literary criticism and material textuality.

In 1993 , McGann launched The Rossetti Archive, one of the first major digital humanities projects, which aimed at collecting and encoding the complete poetic, artistic, and contextual works of the 19th-century English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The project combined scholarly editing with digital technology to create an online research archive that provided innovative access to Rossetti's texts and images. Completed in 2008 , the Archive later became a key part of the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship (NINES), a pioneering effort to bring scholarly coherence to digital resources related to nineteenth-century studies, which McGann also helped conceptualize.

The Rossetti Archive was hosted and developed through, and is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at the University of Virginia. Founded in 1992 , IATH is a research center dedicated to exploring and developing digital tools and procedures for humanities scholarships. It provides scholars with technical, editorial, and design support to develop long-term digital research projects that push the boundaries of scholarly communication. Under IATH's sponsorship, the Rossetti Archive benefited from interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars, developers, and digital librarians.

McGann's project involved a number of key collaborators, including Maura M. Tarnoff , Craig Warren , Cory Korkow , Bethany Nowviskie , William J. Hughes , and Melissa White . Programmer/analysts such as Robbie Bingler and Stephen Ramsay provided the technical backbone, while consultants like Daniel Pitti and John Unsworth offered critical infrastructure support. Their collective work ensured the Rossetti Archive met both rigorous scholarly standards and emerging digital accessibility goals.

Reference list:

IATH (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities). (2024). About IATH. University of Virginia. https://www.iath.virginia.edu/

McGann, J. (1991). The textual condition. Princeton University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv14163p0

McGann, J. (2001). Radiant textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web. Palgrave Macmillan. https://archive.org/details/radianttextualit0000mcga

McGann, J. (2004). Marking texts of many dimensions. In S. Schreibman, R. Siemens, & J. Unsworth (Eds.), A companion to digital humanities. Blackwell. https://companions.digitalhumanities.org/DH/?chapter=content/9781405103213_foreword.html

Rossetti Archive. (2008). The complete writings and pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A hypermedia research archive (J. J. McGann, Ed.). Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. http://www.rossettiarchive.org/

Content Description

This collection contains an addition to the Jerome McGann Papers (MSS 15427) which documents the research for, creation of, and work on the Rossetti Archive , or The Complete Writings and Pictires of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Hypermedia Archive , which is included in the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship (NINES) project. The Rossetti Archive was an important early digital humanities project that began in 1993 and was completed in 2008. This project sought to bring together the pictorial, textual, and also contextual writing from the period of the nineteenth-century English poet and artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti .

This addition to the Jerome McGann Papers (circa 1993–2008), the first series in the finding aid, includes written and digital formats that document the preparation, creation, and development of one of the foundational projects in the digital humanities. Initiated by University of Virginia professor Jerome McGann , in collaboration with colleagues, the Rossetti Archive sought to integrate the pictorial, textual, and contextual works of nineteenth-century English poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The addition includes a variety of printed and handwritten correspondence, research notes, samples of duplications (scans or photocopies) of Rossetti's works, photographic prints, and documentation of the planning and technical aspects of the project. These materials are organized into three subseries: materials relating the McGann's research on Dante Rossetti, materials documenting the creation and maintenance of the Rossetti Archive website, and other materials.

The first subseries includes mainly correspondence and research notes, but also scans, printouts, catalogs, and materials related to copyright and use permissions. The correspondence includes those between McGann and various repositories with Dante Rossetti related holdings, as well as, with individuals that have knowledge of, access to, or are inquiring about Rossetti materials. Many of these letters are accompanied by scans of documents annotated with research notes, notes on loose leaves of paper, photographic prints, and slide samples of Rossetti works. There are also digitized materials and born-digital files documenting McGann's research for the project. Much of these correspondences document McGann's work in preparing to create the archive.

The second subseries includes many of the schematics and plans for developing the Rossetti Archive, such as printed xml files, paper scans of Rossetti works labeled with file names, and inventories of digital scans of Rossetti works compiled by McGann. These are accompanied by correspondence between McGann and his collaborators in constructing the digital Archive, in which they discuss the technical aspects of creating the website and organizing the Archive's content. There are also born-digital files in the collection that document the work of creating the Rossetti Archive. Also included in this subseries are correspondence from individuals inquiring about the Archive, and photographic prints.

The third subseries includes materials unrelated to Rossetti and the Archive. These include mainly photographic materials.

Arrangement

This addition to the Jerome McGann Papers is the first series in this finding aid. It is arranged into three main subseries with the first two further arranged into files.

Subseries 1 is arranged into four files. The first are correspondences that relate to McGann's research on Dante Gabriel Rossetti for the purpose of creating the Rossetti Archive. Many folders within the first file include research notes. These folders are arranged alphabetically by the name of the correspondent (institution or individual).The second file consists of research notes, research documents, and other correspndence relating to McGann's work. Files 3 and four are the digital files and their physical carriers respectively.

Subseries 2 is arranged into four files. The first file includes the schematics and plans for developing the Rossetti Archive. The second file contains correspondence among the creators of the Archive, as well as, notes, and other technical information documenting the Archive's development. These files, in large, are arranged in original order. Files 3 and four are the digital files and their physical carriers respectively.

Subseries 3 includes other materials.

The arrangement is as follows:

Series 1 - Rossetti Archives and NINES records addition (ViU-2021-0074)

Subseries 1 - Materials related to research on Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

File 1 - Correspondence and notes documenting research for the Rossetti Archive.

File 2 - Research notes and documents, and other related correspondents.

File 3 - Digital files.

File 4 - Physical carriers [RESTRICTED].

Subseries 2 - Materials concerning the Rossetti Archive:

File 1 - Schematics and plans for developing the Rossetti Archive.

File 2 - Correspondence and notes concerning the development of the Rossetti Archive.

File 3 - Digital files.

File 4 - Physical carriers [RESTRICTED].

Subseries 3 - Other materials

Related Material

The records/guides for this collection's original acquisition and other previous additions can be found in VIRGO, the Library's online catalog, as well as (in many cases) on the Archival Repositories of the Virginias (ARVAS) website.

For best results, search using the collection's Identifier/Call Number: MSS 15401.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Digital humanities
• McGann, Jerome J.
• Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882
• Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882
• literature