Dear George,

May I trouble you for some advice? On the behalf of myself, my university, and the Ruskin Programme at Lancaster, I applied for an NEH Editions grant for compiling an electronic edition of all the early Ruskin, from earliest juvenilia through the early critical work and preparation for "Modern Painters." Paired with the recently completed "Modern Painters" edition, "Early Ruskin MSS." would make available all of Ruskin from the beginning through the first major book. As you know, I've been working on editing this material for several years, and the lion's share of the work is done. The material is ready to be made accessible in the most useful and interesting form to others.

We did very well with NEH, but fell just short of acceptance, and NEH is advising reapplication for next year. It's clear what we need to fix. All six of the "specialist" evaluators (the Ruskinians and Victorianists) had nothing but praise. It was the NEH panel who raised questions about the electronic product, and I think they were right to do so. We don't have that sufficiently worked out yet. (It also appears that one panelist convinced everyone--none of the specialist reviewers were bothered by this--that my decision to omit the family letters and 1830 diary weakened the edition, even though adequate modern editions exist. This has caught me by surprise, and I'm not sure what I think about the objection.)

I was in Lancaster a few weeks ago talking over the results with Keith Hanley and Ray Haslam (Roger Garside was out of town). Keith would like to see a new participant added to the project--someone who is highly proficient in hypertext from the standpoint of editorial theory. We had someone on the team, a student of Keith's, who was supposed to fill that role but who has receded into the background owing to illness, and Keith doesn't have anyone else quite like that in the pipeline. I'm gradually becoming more proficient in editing theory and in electronic issues, but I have a long way to go, and my situation here has never allowed me to immerse myself fully; that's what this grant is partly meant to let me do. Roger Garside is good at designing programs, but he's not an editor, though he and Ray are deep into the Venice notebooks.

Do you have any suggestions about someone who would find it profitable and feasible to join the project? Distance is a nuisance but not an impossible obstacle (though I wouldn't want someone from overseas; I find it hard enough to keep the Lancaster group's attention from over here, and a compatriot here would help keep the fires going). The immediate goal would be to brainstorm about the design, and figure out how to ensure realistically that best practices of electronic editing will be met. If we can get help with that one element, and present Roger Garside with some concrete recommendations about what we need to build, by the NEH November deadline, I think we can jump the last hurdle. (Results came back from NEH about two months late, just a few days before I left for the UK in June, so I've moved as fast as I could.)

If you would like to see the last application and the evaluators' reports, I'd be happy to send them. Surely there's someone in the world whose career would be helped by this, and who would find it interesting. We're all but ready to go.

In other scholarship, I'm excited about eventually doing a book on the early Victorian precocious child. I'm finding very intriguing correspondences between Macaulay and Ruskin, in terms of evangelical parental attitudes about precocity, of how writing works in these family settings, and of (problematic) consequences for the mature writer's continuing reliance on closed family circles for productivity and inspiration. Views about precocity are related to views about economics, as well (anxieties about "excess" and overinvestment). Mill's career of course presents the contrast with Ruskin's and Macaulay's. I need to get a precocious girl in there too; the Brontes come overwhelmingly to mind.

Thanks for your time and any suggestions you can offer.

David