18th Century Collected Editions: Qualitative and Quantitative Studies on a central book type

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Philip Ajouri; Dr. Tobias Christ
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 563741168

This project investigates the influential book type of collected edition during the 18th Century in German-speaking world. Based on a large digitised corpus originating from the VD 18 catalogue, we aim to explore the emergence and development of not only literary author’s collections, but the whole range of forms and practices of editing, printing, and publishing collected editions. In contrast to the “Scalable Reading” project, which has been approved for two doctoral positions and focuses on one author and the OCR-recognized texts, combining the methods of digital humanities and book studies, the project applied for here pursues a mixed-methods approach that refers to the entirety of the editions of works contained in VD 18. It combines quantitative analyses of the enriched VD18 database with qualitative, cultural studies investigations of the editions in a methodologically reflected manner. On basis of the index of 18th century prints published in the German-speaking world (VD 18), the data will be structured, enriched and made searchable in a new way; the results and innovative search options will be made available to the public on a sustainable basis (1). Using a mixed-methods design, this data will be combined with historical-hermeneutical studies in order to explore the development and typology of collected editions, their arrangement and their paratexts (2). Since mixed-method designs are rarely used and discussed in book and literary studies, it is an independent project goal to expand the range of methods in this regard (3). This project will make it possible for the first time to see in its entirety how works were collected, presented and valued on the 18th century book market.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants