While at the Burney Centre, I developed a method that combines layering techniques, color levels, and filters and has proved highly effective for my research work on (Oxford University Press), (Oxford University Press), and the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson. The method is more advanced than simple image enlargement techniques used by most researchers. Importantly though, it remains far less expensive than multi-spectral imaging. First, it requires changing the color levels of a high-resolution photograph or scan in order to emphasize the contrast between obliteration marks and original text. The next steps involve adding new layers and carefully removing obliteration marks until the original text becomes visible by using a paint brush tool that is set to the background color. This method can also be used in conjunction with various filters that may sharpen or clarify some aspects of the image. I’ve illustrated the method in a corresponding series of images [Figures 4-16], which demonstrate the step-by-step process of recovering a word. Not all of the steps are obligatory, but the results are often improved after adjusting the Brightness/Contrast or Levels in the image [Figures 5-6] and using and often customizing the Sharpen filter [Figures 7-9]. Next, it is important to add a layer [Figure 10] to separate the researcher’s work from the original image, which allows for easy recovery of the original if a mistake is made during the process. The following steps are largely iterative, which involve using the paint tool to remove obliteration marks that are not definitively part of the original text [Figures 11-15]. Finally, the Brightness/Contrast or Levels can be adjusted once again [Figure 16] to make the recovery work blend into the original background.

The technique contributed to the recovery of nearly all of the obliterated text in the first two volumes of , which were published by Oxford University Press in 2011. Unlike multi-spectral imaging, the use of image manipulation software is very cost-effective and thus applications in other textual projects, not just those related to the eighteenth century, are potentially wide-ranging.

I am currently using these methodologies for a project that focuses on the creative process of composition and the interactions between manuscript and print in the eighteenth century. The work on Frances Burney’s manuscripts that I have already undertaken at the Burney Centre in Montreal will provide the foundation for this project, which will employ and further develop my digital paleographical methodology using a new set of eighteenth-century manuscripts and will assess and analyze the insights it offers. The rest of this piece will demonstrate four applications of this method to important eighteenth-century manuscripts and discuss its potential for general use.

One of the earliest published examples of this technique appears in volume 1 of (2011). This volume, which spans July-December 1786, depicts the beginning of Frances Burney’s tenure as Keeper of the Robes at the court of Queen Charlotte. Burney frequently crossed out passages in her journals, especially those that she later deemed were too private for potential public consumption. The top image in Figure 17 is a typical obliterated passage from Burney’s court years; the bottom image contains the same passage, but it has been modified using my digital paleography methodologies. In the altered image, we can detect the opening words The mourning. The next word will is more difficult, though the two l’s at the end make it possible to read. 3 weeks is clear as is I believe. The beginning of the second line is the most obscured: I determined that the first mark was a false start and read this as we were. already at Kew is fairly legible, and so is the final part, before the Princess Amelia died, except perhaps for the last letters of before, though these can be safely guessed. When put together, the text reads, The mourning will be but 3 weeks, I believe. We were already at Kew before the Princess Amelia died. It is a significant passage, which reveals Burney’s response to the death of Princess Amelia, the second daughter of George II, on 31 October 1786 .

This methodology has also been useful when applied to Burney’s novel manuscripts. There are surviving early manuscript drafts and later versions, including a proof copy, an interleaved copy, and some significant post-publication revisions, for her four novels, (1778), (1782), (1796), and (1814). Eighteenth-century scholars have rarely been able to analyze fictional manuscripts because few novel manuscripts from the eighteenth-century survive as Burney’s do: it was common practice for printing houses to divide and destroy manuscripts during the publishing process. Extant manuscripts sometimes contain important authorial or editorial additions, pasted or sewn onto manuscript pages. This methodology can contribute to our understanding of Burney’s creative process of composition. In the early draft fragments that survive from her third novel , Burney changes the names of some of the characters. Burney’s most fascinating alteration can be seen in Figure 18, where Mr. Solmes is discovered to be a gender-bending replacement for Mrs. Arlbery. Mr. Solmes is undoubtedly a reference to the eponymous heroine’s distasteful and unyielding suitor in Samuel Richardson’s (1747-8). Initially, this name change seems like a bizarre selection for the Mrs. Arlbery figure, who is playful, sarcastic, and largely good intentioned. Yet the early version of Mrs. Arlbery tries to force Camilla into a mercenary marriage to a nobleman so that she can pay off her debts. She even tries to prevent Camilla from seeing her father in the last minutes before the marriage is solemnized. The name change to Mr. Solmes, then, is an apt choice for an advocate of a pressured, mercenary marriage. It reveals the significance of as an intertext for , even though the storyline that contained Camilla’s failed aristocratic marriage was ultimately deleted from the novel. We can also see that Burney’s name and gender change of Mrs. Arlbery was half-hearted at best, since all of the pronouns linked to her character in the draft were left feminine.

These digital methodologies, however, are not always successful. The primary limiting factors are 1) poor image quality and 2) extremely heavy deletions and manuscript deterioration. Unfortunately, researchers can rarely control either of these factors. It is usually impossible to reconstruct text where there are holes, gaps, and tears in the manuscript. Extremely heavy obliterations – where it is even difficult to determine the existence of letters with ascenders (b, d, h, k, l, and t), descenders (g, j, p, q, and y), or both ascenders and descenders (f and long s) – can only be deciphered with the help of multi-spectral imaging or invasive chemical processes. Image quality can also be prohibitively low; few librarians allow image reproduction in excess of 300 dpi . It is also nearly impossible to retrieve high resolution and color scans from most microfilm versions, which are often used in lieu of the original manuscripts . Figure 19, which is taken from the correspondence between the eighteenth-century author Samuel Richardson and his admirer and friend Lady Dorothy Bradshaigh, illustrates the difficulties that arise with low image resolution and heavy deletions. The Richardson-Bradshaigh correspondence, which began with the latter’s anonymous homage to the former’s writings, is in general riddled with obliteration marks because their correspondence, which lasted from 1748 until Richardson’s death in 1761, was prepared for public consumption, initially within Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s  (1804). Most of the Richardson-Bradshaigh correspondence is held in the Forster Collection . Places and names, such Lady Bradshaigh’s identity and the low origins of her husband’s wealth (cannel coal pits at their estate in Haigh, Lancashire), are constantly obscured, but these can almost always be safely guessed. There are other extended deletions in the text, and because of the thick and heavy nature of the obliteration marks, many of these cannot be fully or even mostly deciphered, such as the example given in Figure 19.

Above all, these digital methods have the potential to shape paleographical work beyond Frances Burney, Samuel Richardson, and the Burney Centre. I will close with a discussion of a poem by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, an eighteenth-century author known primarily for her (written 1716-18), which contain invaluable descriptions of eastern culture in the early eighteenth century. Lady Mary’s from her (1716), which exist in manuscript form and are written in the famous poet Alexander Pope’s hand, has a significant alternate ending. I am grateful to Cassie Childs, who is working on an article-length study of this poem called for bringing this to my attention . At the end of a pair of unidentified lovers is forced to part. The final text is apparent in a digital photo of the manuscript, though obliteration marks can be clearly discerned Figure 20:

Lady Mary’s revised version is fascinating in light of the original text, which can be recovered after my technique has been applied in Figure 21:

There is a significant change in female agency between the early and the final version. While the final version emphasizes the male lover’s curses because of his unfinish’d Loves, the first ends with the lady’s direct speech, which emphasizes her lost joys. Montagu’s removal of the female lover’s sexual agency before publication reveals the extent to which stringent eighteenth-century cultural norms may have influenced her creative process of composition.

These four examples from manuscripts by Frances Burney, Samuel Richardson, and Lady Wortley Montagu illustrate that this project could be of great interest to eighteenth-century manuscript and textual scholars, as it uses digital methodologies to elucidate manuscripts for editing projects, thus making such projects more accessible than ever before. Moreover, these techniques need not be limited to eighteenth-century manuscripts: as long as the images are presented in high-resolution and as long as the obliterations are neither too thick nor too heavy, the techniques have potentially wide applications. They provide, above all, a means of interacting with manuscripts through methodologies that, instead of opposing, incorporate the rise of digital texts and technologies.