The project was created in 1995 by Sheila Cavanagh, associate professor of English, in collaboration with the Beck Center, the Institute of Women's Studies and the Virtual Library project. It is an online collection of edited and unedited texts produced by women writers between the 16th and 19th centuries. The idea to edit and place them online for academic study or pleasure reading sprung from work Cavanagh was doing to find ways for computers to enhance education. The project puts graduate students to work editing and annotating these long-forgotten texts with the hope of giving modern readers new sources for research. It's interesting when you're reading the work, but it's tedious because you're looking for things like commas and spelling.
Work is submitted from a variety of sources.
The project has an editorial board that selects appropriate material. Graduate students can submit texts, and faculty with a specific research interest are sometimes approached for suggestions. So far six texts have been edited and posted on the project's website. Written by a Lady in Vindication of her Sex, the full title of poem in whose preface the above passage appears. Working in groups of four, students edit and annotate different sections of a text from the collection, and write notes explaining their editorial choices.