Features

In addition to (a) reading a technical description of each volume, users can (b) index the volume's content by either poem title or page number, (c) browse through and (d) zoom in on images of the volume's pages and front- and back-matter, (e) concord the volume's contents, and (f) examine a concise list of press variants in each printed volume.  Users navigate to the desired function by clicking the appropriate heading on the volume home page.

Bibliographical Description.  Linked to images and web pages included elsewhere on this site, this description includes the collation formula for each printed edition and notes the variant contents of particular copies.  For the most comprehensive account of each edition, see Geoffrey Keynes, A Bibliography of the Works of Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's.   4^th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).

 Index of poems.   Titles used in the index are the Donne Variorum short forms, and each abbreviation is accompanied by the first line of the poem.  Users may toggle back and forth between an alphabetized list of titles or a page-ordered table of contents by ticking the appropriate bird's eye at the top of the index page.  Each index entry is a hot link; clicking on it brings up the combined transcription-image file of the poem in the volume. 

Browse. The browser allows users to examine the volume in multiple ways.   Top- and bottom-of-screen buttons and fillable panels allow one to move through the volume page-by-page or poem-by-poem or to jump directly to a specified page by entering its number in the blank box.

Zoom  Feature.  A zoom feature is available in order to permit examination of page images in minute detail. Click the page image to enlarge. A new window will open in which options are listed at the top. To move the image, click and drag with the cursor.

Concordance .   The concordance employs the traditional key-word-in-context format to present an ordered list of each occurrence of a given word in the volume, but it differs from conventional concordances in a number of ways:

1. In addition to the list of words in modern typeface, users can view each word as it appears in the original image.
2. Users may choose whether or not to deploy a list of stop words in concording the volume.  If this option is not selected, every article, conjunction, and preposition will be included in the concordance.
3. Constructions containing ampersands, elision marks and apostrophes, parentheses, hyphens, and digraphs (ae)  may be concorded along with actual words.
4. The concordance does not distinguish between words beginning with capital letters and those beginning with minuscules, but spelling has not otherwise been regularized in the volume.  Thus, for example, "soul and "soule appear as separate entries in the alphabetized list of key words.

Selecting a word to concord from the drop-down list presents the user with an organized set of all lines that contain the selected word, with the word itself highlighted in yellow.   Each line displayed is preceded by an IDentification code containing (a) the poem title, (b) the Donne Variorum numerical siglum for the poem, (c) the siglum of the source text (00A for the 1633 Poems), and (d) the line number in the poem.  Entries in the set of lines are organized numerically by poem number and, within each poem, line number.

Each line in a concorded set is a hot link, which can be clicked to bring up the combined transcription-image containing the selected word.  In this display, the transcription line containing the word is located on the page by blue highlighting.

Composite List of Variants.  Organized sequentially by volume page number, this list pulls together in a single list all press variants so far identified in the edition.  To facilitate analysis of the typesetting of the edition, including identification of corrected (cor) and uncorrected (unc) states of individual sheets, we have added to the page number an indication of the signature and forme on which each variant appears.