Marking Up Stow’s Survey of London
When I first began working with John Stow’s Survey of London sometime in the
summer of 2012, I had no clue what I was getting into. I’m not sure I had even
heard of Stow before being assigned the task of performing TEI markup on his
text. Only a few short weeks later, though, I was so immersed in Stow’s London
that I actually began to dream about it.
What I discovered while working with Stow’s text was that marking it up was not
always obvious. The Survey introduced many new considerations regarding MoEML’s
encoding practices that our Library’s shorter texts had not. So I was grateful
when Nathan Phillips joined our team in the fall of 2012 and became as absorbed
in Stow’s text as I was. We discussed every encoding decision, deliberating
about how to present the information to future readers.
The following summer, in July 2013, I had the opportunity to visit the Folger Shakespeare Library and
examine a 1598 copy of Stow’s Survey in person. The copy I pulled up was STC
23341 copy 2, which Janelle had previously examined briefly. She had noticed
substantial manuscript marginal notes in that copy, including drawings of
various churches and other buildings named in the text, and wanted to know
more.
![Title page of STC 23341 copy 2. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Title page of STC 23341 copy 2. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.](graphics/IMG_6057.jpg)
After a year of working with a digital copy of Stow’s text, finally holding the
physical object in my hands was an interesting experience. The quarto volume was smaller
than I
had imagined. I held it for several moments, absorbing every new detail about
this text: the smell, the texture and thickness of the pages, the four hundred
years of history that this book had survived. Turning the pages was
simultaneously familiar and disorienting. I had stared at a screen containing
that blackletter text for a year by then; I knew it well. I knew where to find
lists, long pages of Latin, Greek text, misnumbered pages. Yet this experience
was incredibly different from clicking through pages on EEBO, or scrutinizing
thumbnails in search of a particular page.
The most remarkable thing about this particular copy is the marginal notes. Roughly
seventy-five percent of the 500 pages are marked up. My
task at the Folger was to photograph every note in the book. Although we’d
initially budgeted a day for this, the sheer volume of notes meant that it took
me almost three whole days to work through the text. My daily emails back to
MoEML were filled with astonishment over the amount and the detail of the
marginal inscriptions.
![John Gibbon [Johan Gybbon, Hand B] inserts a leaf and adds to Stow’s text. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library. John Gibbon [Johan Gybbon, Hand B] inserts a leaf and adds to Stow’s text. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.](graphics/IMG_6528.jpg)
Johan Gybbon,Hand B] inserts a leaf and adds to Stow’s text. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
I identified two separate hands responsible for these marginal notes. The first hand
(Hand A) made
only minor comments through the text; the second (Hand B), who names himself as John
Gibbon, interacts extensively with the text. Gibbon draws manicules (pointing
hands) to significant passages, the most common type of manuscript marginalia in early
modern books. Unusually, however, he develops a system of symbols and drawings that
he uses throughout. Mentions in the original text of coats of arms are marked by a
simple drawing of a coat of arms. Stow’s lists of the dead
buried in churches are highlighted by a drawing of a tomb. Likewise, drawings of
bells accompany any mention of them. Most impressively, many of the buildings
named by Stow are decorated by marginal drawings of these buildings. Although
some of the buildings are generic (a tower or an almshouse always has a similar
drawing), others suggest greater thought behind the drawing.
![A typical building sketch. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library. A typical building sketch. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.](graphics/IMG_6462.jpg)
We are still trying to determine the significance of these
distinctive drawings of buildings. They may not necessarily be eyewitness
drawings, but determining exactly what they mean will require more research.
Chances are that Gibbon was reading through Stow after the Great Fire of London,
so perhaps his comments and drawings are meant to update the Survey. Besides adding the drawings, Gibbon also corrects Stow on certain details (even
his grammatical
errors), or provides updated information. He inserts leaves into the text to fill
in anything he believes is missing. He even responds to or corrects information
written by Hand A.
![Note the two different hands. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Note the two different hands. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.](graphics/IMG_6051.jpg)
As I turned through the pages and photographed those notes and drawings, I began
to form an image of the person who meticulously marked up this text. I emailed
Nathan to let him know what I was finding and how astounded I was by the detail
of these marginal notes. Nathan pointed out that we had been reading through
Stow with the same level of meticulousness.
My trip to the Folger began to answer some of the research questions we had been
forming, and, like any good research trip, produced many more new questions to
consider. As we go through the hundreds of photographs I brought home, we
are looking forward to tackling these questions, finding out more about our two
marginators. A quick search of the ODNB for
Johan Gybbonor variants on that name led me to John Gibbon, a London-born herald who lived from 1629-1718. I corroborated his identity by cross-referencing details of his biography with the details provided in the marginal notes. According to the ODNB, Gibbon was baptised and buried in St. Mary Aldermary. Hand Two notes that this church is where his parents are buried, and close to where he himself was born. I have no doubt that more careful examination of the marginal notes in this Stow text will reveal further information about its marginators.
![In one of the Folger’s copies of the 1598 Survey (STC 23341 copy 2), John Gibbon has written, on the bottom of the page describing St. Mary Aldermary in Cordwainer Street Ward, Heere my father and mother lye Buried / Jo: Gibbon / and I was borne there. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library. In one of the Folger’s copies of the 1598 Survey (STC 23341 copy 2), John Gibbon has written, on the bottom of the page describing St. Mary Aldermary in Cordwainer Street Ward, Heere my father and mother lye Buried / Jo: Gibbon / and I was borne there. Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.](graphics/IMG_6346_crop.jpg)
Heere my father and mother lye Buried / Jo: Gibbon / and I was borne there.Photo by Sarah Milligan courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
However, what strikes me most about my experience working with this physical
edition of the text is what Nathan said to me. John Gibbon and I read Stow’s text in very similar ways. We comb through
it marking it up, identifying errors,
cross-referencing, and asking questions. So while I spent a year staring at two
computer screens—one with a scan, and the other with XML text—and John Gibbon
worked with a particular copy of the 1598 edition of the Survey of London, and while we may have different goals and audiences, our interaction with Stow’s
text has
been remarkably similar. Perhaps John Gibbon even had dreams about Stow too.
References
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Citation
EEBO (EEBO). Proquest LLC. Subscr.This item is cited in the following documents:
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Citation
ODNB. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford UP. http://www.oxforddnb.com/. [The ODNB is a subscription database. Most university and college institutions will have a subscription.] -
Citation
Stow, John. A SVRVAY OF LONDON. Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Moderne estate, and description of that Citie, written in the yeare 1598. by Iohn Stow Citizen of London. Also an Apologie (or defence) against the opinion of some men, concerning that Citie, the greatnesse thereof. With an Appendix, containing in Latine, Libellum de situ &nobilitate Londini: written by William Fitzstephen, in the raigne of Henry the second. London: John Windet for John Wolfe, 1598. STC 23341. Huntington Library copy. Reprint. EEBO. Web.This item is cited in the following documents:
Cite this page
MLA citation
Marking Up Stow’s Survey of London.The Map of Early Modern London, edited by , U of Victoria, 15 Sep. 2020, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/BLOG9.htm.
Chicago citation
Marking Up Stow’s Survey of London.The Map of Early Modern London. Ed. . Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed September 15, 2020. https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/BLOG9.htm.
APA citation
Survey of London. In (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London. Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/BLOG9.htm.
2020. Marking Up Stow’s RIS file (for RefMan, EndNote etc.)
Provider: University of Victoria Database: The Map of Early Modern London Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8" TY - ELEC A1 - Milligan, Sarah ED - Jenstad, Janelle T1 - Marking Up Stow’s Survey of London T2 - The Map of Early Modern London PY - 2020 DA - 2020/09/15 CY - Victoria PB - University of Victoria LA - English UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/BLOG9.htm UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/xml/standalone/BLOG9.xml ER -
RefWorks
RT Web Page SR Electronic(1) A1 Milligan, Sarah A6 Jenstad, Janelle T1 Marking Up Stow’s Survey of London T2 The Map of Early Modern London WP 2020 FD 2020/09/15 RD 2020/09/15 PP Victoria PB University of Victoria LA English OL English LK https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/BLOG9.htm
TEI citation
<bibl type="mla"><author><name ref="#MILL2"><surname>Milligan</surname>, <forename>Sarah</forename></name></author>.
<title level="a">Marking Up Stow’s <title level="m">Survey of London</title></title>.
<title level="m">The Map of Early Modern London</title>, edited by <editor><name ref="#JENS1"><forename>Janelle</forename>
<surname>Jenstad</surname></name></editor>, <publisher>U of Victoria</publisher>,
<date when="2020-09-15">15 Sep. 2020</date>, <ref target="https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/BLOG9.htm">mapoflondon.uvic.ca/BLOG9.htm</ref>.</bibl>
Personography
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Joey Takeda
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Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.Roles played in the project
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Tye Landels-Gruenewald
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Zaqir Virani
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Research Assistant, 2013-2014. Zaqir Virani completed his MA at the University of Victoria in April 2014. He received his BA from Simon Fraser University in 2012, and has worked as a musician, producer, and author of short fiction. His research focused on the linkage of sound and textual analysis software and the work of Samuel Beckett.Roles played in the project
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Nathan Phillips
NAP
Research Assistant, 2012-2014. Nathan Phillips completed his MA at the University of Victoria specializing in medieval and early modern studies in April 2014. His research focused on seventeenth-century non-dramatic literature, intellectual history, and the intersection of religion and politics. Additionally, Nathan was interested in textual studies, early-Tudor drama, and the editorial questions one can ask of all sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts in the twisted mire of 400 years of editorial practice. Nathan is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at Brown University.Roles played in the project
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Sarah Milligan
SM
Research Assistant, 2012-2014. MoEML Research Affiliate. Sarah Milligan completed her MA at the University of Victoria in 2012 on the invalid persona in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. She has also worked with the Internet Shakespeare Editions and with Dr. Alison Chapman on the Victorian Poetry Network, compiling an index of Victorian periodical poetry.Roles played in the project
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Kim McLean-Fiander
KMF
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–present. Associate Project Director, 2015–present. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to The Map of Early Modern London from the Cultures of Knowledge digital humanities project at the University of Oxford, where she was the editor of Early Modern Letters Online, an open-access union catalogue and editorial interface for correspondence from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. She is currently Co-Director of a sister project to EMLO called Women’s Early Modern Letters Online (WEMLO). In the past, she held an internship with the curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, completed a doctorate at Oxford on paratext and early modern women writers, and worked a number of years for the Bodleian Libraries and as a freelance editor. She has a passion for rare books and manuscripts as social and material artifacts, and is interested in the development of digital resources that will improve access to these materials while ensuring their ongoing preservation and conservation. An avid traveler, Kim has always loved both London and maps, and so is particularly delighted to be able to bring her early modern scholarly expertise to bear on the MoEML project.Roles played in the project
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Janelle Jenstad
JJ
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and PI of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. She has taught at Queen’s University, the Summer Academy at the Stratford Festival, the University of Windsor, and the University of Victoria. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media (Routledge). She has prepared a documentary edition of John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Renaissance and Reformation,Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, Elizabethan Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism, and The Silver Society Journal. Her book chapters have appeared (or will appear) in Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society (Brill, 2004), Shakespeare, Language and the Stage, The Fifth Wall: Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism, Performance and Theatre Studies (Arden/Thomson Learning, 2005), Approaches to Teaching Othello (Modern Language Association, 2005), Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2007), New Directions in the Geohumanities: Art, Text, and History at the Edge of Place (Routledge, 2011), Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter, 2016), Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives (MLA, 2015), Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana, 2016), Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota, 2017), and Rethinking Shakespeare’s Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018).Roles played in the project
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Jenstad, Janelle.
Building a Gazetteer for Early Modern London, 1550-1650.
Placing Names. Ed. Merrick Lex Berman, Ruth Mostern, and Humphrey Southall. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2016. 129-145. -
Jenstad, Janelle.
The Burse and the Merchant’s Purse: Coin, Credit, and the Nation in Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody.
The Elizabethan Theatre XV. Ed. C.E. McGee and A.L. Magnusson. Toronto: P.D. Meany, 2002. 181–202. Print. -
Jenstad, Janelle.
Early Modern Literary Studies 8.2 (2002): 5.1–26..The City Cannot Hold You
: Social Conversion in the Goldsmith’s Shop. -
Jenstad, Janelle.
The Silver Society Journal 10 (1998): 40–43.The Gouldesmythes Storehowse
: Early Evidence for Specialisation. -
Jenstad, Janelle.
Lying-in Like a Countess: The Lisle Letters, the Cecil Family, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34 (2004): 373–403. doi:10.1215/10829636–34–2–373. -
Jenstad, Janelle.
Public Glory, Private Gilt: The Goldsmiths’ Company and the Spectacle of Punishment.
Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society. Ed. Anne Goldgar and Robert Frost. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 191–217. Print. -
Jenstad, Janelle.
Smock Secrets: Birth and Women’s Mysteries on the Early Modern Stage.
Performing Maternity in Early Modern England. Ed. Katherine Moncrief and Kathryn McPherson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. 87–99. Print. -
Jenstad, Janelle.
Using Early Modern Maps in Literary Studies: Views and Caveats from London.
GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place. Ed. Michael Dear, James Ketchum, Sarah Luria, and Doug Richardson. London: Routledge, 2011. Print. -
Jenstad, Janelle.
Versioning John Stow’s A Survey of London, or, What’s New in 1618 and 1633?.
Janelle Jenstad Blog. https://janellejenstad.com/2013/03/20/versioning-john-stows-a-survey-of-london-or-whats-new-in-1618-and-1633/. -
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Internet Shakespeare Editions. Open.
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Stow, John. A SVRVAY OF LONDON. Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Moderne estate, and description of that Citie, written in the yeare 1598. by Iohn Stow Citizen of London. Also an Apologie (or defence) against the opinion of some men, concerning that Citie, the greatnesse thereof. With an Appendix, containing in Latine, Libellum de situ & nobilitate Londini: written by William Fitzstephen, in the raigne of Henry the second. Ed. Janelle Jenstad and the MoEML Team. MoEML. Transcribed. Web.
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Martin D. Holmes
MDH
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.Roles played in the project
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Locations
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London is mentioned in the following documents:
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St. Mary Aldermary is mentioned in the following documents:
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Cordwainer Street Ward
MoEML is aware that the ward boundaries are inaccurate for a number of wards. We are working on redrawing the boundaries. This page offers a diplomatic transcription of the opening section of John Stow’s description of this ward from his Survey of London.Cordwainer Street Ward is mentioned in the following documents: