Networking the Republic of Letters, 1550-1750

Established in 2009, and now in our second phase (2013-14), we are a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project based at the University of Oxford with generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. We are using digital methods to reassemble and interpret the correspondence networks of the early modern period.

The Letter Catchers by Annaliese Stoney for Cultures of Knowledge (with inspiration from Pier Francesco Mola)

EMLO

Early Modern Letters Online is our growing union catalogue of correspondence from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Developing EMLO is now at the heart of what we do.

Pilot Projects

Two case studies focusing on the epistolary networks of Samuel Hartlib and Jan Amos Comenius are supplying EMLO with research questions and fresh data, and vetting its digital solutions.

Events

A rich programme of seminars, workshops, conferences, and focus groups is informing EMLO’s ongoing development and embedding it within a community of potential users and contributors.

We also curate an archive of epistolary Resources, and maintain an active Blog. Our overall objective between now and the end of 2014 is to develop EMLO into a union catalogue increasingly representative of the early modern Republic of Letters as a whole, an invaluable research tool for those confronting epistolary data on all scales, and a platform for the collaborative reconstruction of the correspondence cultures of the early modern world.

Find Out How

Love early modern letters? Get involved!

From Our Blog

  • Open-Sourcing EMLO-Edit: Code for our Editorial Interface Now Available on GitHub!

    We are pleased to report that the complete code base of EMLO-Edit, the editorial interface for all of the metadata underlying Early Modern Letters Online, is now freely available for reuse on GitHub. Built from scratch by our Founding Developer Sue Burgess from Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services (BDLSS), EMLO-Edit is a powerful, user-friendly [...]

  • Celtic Connections: Roderick O’Flaherty’s Letters Published

    We are excited to announce the publication by the Royal Irish Academy of Roderick O’Flaherty’s Letters to William Molyneux, Edward Lhwyd, and Samuel Molyneux: 1696-1709, edited by Professor of Diplomatic at Oxford (and CofK Steering Committee member) Richard Sharpe. A copy of the edition was presented to Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, earlier this [...]

  • Letters in Focus: Crowning Around

    Sixty years on from the coronation of Elizabeth II could be a moment to consider the coronation of another British queen for whom this time-honoured ceremony ran neither seamlessly nor to plan. Not only did the bishops apparently forget the communion bread and wine but it seems the crown was put on askew by the [...]