The Preface Project is a multi-modal digital archive exploring the relationships among truth claims, direct address of the reader, and authorial voice in the prefaces of 1760s novels. The archive conceives of prefaces as products of and catalysts for relationality, while weaving together new layers of enmeshment, through curated cataloging and audio, visual, and textual digital reproductions.  Through the proliferation and linking of metadata, through the multimedia presentation of the prefaces, and through the open-access publication of the archived materials, the Preface Project generates new networks, entangling them with the conversations and relations of 1760s prefaces. Welcome, reader.

 

N.B. on navigation: "Browse Exhibits" offers the most user-friendly interface for engaging with these materials. "Browse Collections" provides access to book-level data about the materials in the archive, and "Browse Items" provides access to object-specific metadata. For the most detailed information about each book and paratext represented in the archive, please view the Early Novels Database XML records in the exhibit page "All XML Records".