We've been so busy with the release of A Player and a Gentleman (our critical edition of Harry Watkins's diary, published by University of Michigan Press) that we've neglected to let Friends of Harry know that our digital edition of the diary is now available at U-M Library Digital Collections!

Six years after Naomi, Scott, and I began working on this project in earnest -- and ten years after I found the manuscript buried in the Skinner Family Papers at Houghton Library (Harvard University) -- our critical edition of Harry Watkins's diary, A Player and a Gentleman: The Diary of Harry Watkins, Nineteenth-Century US American Actor, has been released by University of Michigan Press!

Although Harry Watkins provides an astonishing amount of information about his professional life in his diary, he is practically silent about his family background. So, we have been working hard to piece together his ancestry -- which has led to several remarkable discoveries.

Over the past two years, I have spent hundreds of hours conducting genealogical research on the Watkins family. Today, I know much more about Harry Watkins and his relations than my own family! It's been a fascinating journey, one that is still ongoing.

We are delighted and honored to be the first project featured on ASTR's Digital Research and Scholarship blog! You can read the post here. This group, which was recently established by the American Society of Theatre Research with the support of an anonymous donor, is spearheaded by Dr. Sarah Bay-Cheng (Bowdoin College).

At 7:55pm EST tonight, Shane and I reviewed the transciptions of the last diary pages assigned to our team for the second round of proofreading. Naomi and her editorial assistants finished their half of the diary before we did, so we are not victorious in that respect. But it feels like a victory nevertheless. 

It’s been quiet on the blog recently, but it’s been anything but quiet behind the scenes. For example, we welcomed a new student member to our editorial team: Elijah Akinbamidele. We also hit the halfway point in our second round of tandem proofreading (PR2 is 56% complete as of today), and so we will likely meet our goal of completing all proofreading by the end of this summer!

In early November, Naomi, Scott, and I participated in an "electronic roundtable" focusing on methodologies and tools deployed in the digital humanities, organized by Sarah Bay-Cheng (SUNY Buffalo) and Debra Caplan (Baruch College, CUNY) for the annual American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) conference in Dallas. It was a truly excellent session -- more like an "electronic poster session" because the participants demonstrated their projects on laptops as everyone circulated in the room.

After a very productive summer (among other things, Naomi visited archives in the UK, and Shane and I proofread scores of transcriptions), we received the exciting news that CUNY has awarded us a Collaborative Incentive Research Grant (CIRG) totaling nearly $30,000. This support will enable us to make substantial progress on the project over the next year.

Something exciting happened when Shane and I did our first tandem proofreading session earlier this week. Since the word "exciting" can rarely be applied to the act of proofreading, I thought I would share the story.