Through the SGML markup, the electronic version represents documentary form as well as some content. While the editors have made no attempt to create a facsimile volume in the digital editions, we have recorded and made accessible formal structures of the text such as letters and verse, and the names of authors and publishers. Images of original illustrations, frontispieces, bindings and title pages, when available, appear along with the electronic text. The purposes of such sophisticated document preparation are several and complimentary. Encoding the formal attributes of the physical volume preserves the original object in a descriptive form.
Researchers can search the collection for structural units such as verse or letters.
Scholars and students can download and manipulate the electronic text with SGML or other markup languages in order to emphasize or expose selected characteristics of the literary work in the form of an electronic critical edition. Thus what looks like simple HTML encoded text is accompanied by the richness of content definition and collection-wide contextualization that SGML can offer. Identification and creation issues, such as the transcription of the text to electronic format, the print source, and minor changes made by encoding staff and editors, are all recorded in this section for the future life of the text. The header also provides various date and keyword search terms which are helpful to researchers. Within this section is information about the printed source.