Dear Sir or Madam:

In previous, initial contacts with the NEH, it was suggested that I contact your program as the most appropriate place for developing my proposal.

I am writing to open discussion of a possible grant application for a project that has matured beyond its initial stages of planning and commitment and is now ready to begin formalizing procedures. On behalf of my University, Southeastern Louisiana University, I have secured on paper an agreement with the Ruskin Programme at Lancaster University in the UK jointly to produce a hypertext edition, "The Early Ruskin Manuscripts"--an edition of the early manuscripts of the Victorian art and social critic John Ruskin, which will be joined to a hypertext edition, now reaching completion at Lancaster, of Ruskin's first major published work, "Modern Painters I." Together, the two editions will make available, for the first time, an acceptable scholarly edition of the complete writings of Ruskin from the earliest extant compositions through his first major book.

This project will not only provide a boon to scholarship on a writer of wide appeal and interest but also will carry forward with existing scholarly and technical successes; engage students and faculty in a collaborative project between a major British university and a mid-level American institution, where students are rarely exposed to such ambitious scholarship; and make available to the scholarly community work that has already received extensive support by various granting institutions, including the NEH, and that requires comparatively little investment to reach completion.

For many years now, I have been researching the early writing of John Ruskin in archival study supported by NEH grants (Travel to Collections, and Summer Stipend); a Beinecke Fellowship at Yale University; travel grants from the Bibliographic Society of America, the American Philosophical Society, the South Central Modern Language Association; and many grants from my University. With this generous support, I have now virtually completed gathering materials for the edition, which consists of over three hundred separate texts, many of those texts themselves consisting of many parts and many thousands of words. Moreover, much of the edition has been planned and written, and it has just reached the point where further development should not attempted without thoughtful collaboration between the universities, technicians and humanists, and far-flung colleagues in Ruskin studies.

Two years ago, I secured the paper commitment by Lancaster to pursue a collaborative project in building the hypertext "Early Ruskin Manuscripts," using Lancaster's software developed for the "Modern Painters" edition and my scholarship. Since then, a doctoral student at Lancaster has begun developing an edition of one major text in the edition, and I have turned over my preparatory scholarship for that text to him. This spring, my University hosted a two-week visit from the editor-in-chief of the Lancaster "Modern Painters" edition, Dr. Lawrence Woof, who helped me considerably to work through issues of hypertext design connected with the peculiar demands of the editorial project. I am now about to travel to Lancaster to meet again with the head of the Ruskin Programme at Lancaster, Professor Keith Hanley, the developer of the Lancaster software program, Dr. Roger Garside, and the doctoral student, Alastair Doughty. There we will build on Dr. Woof's suggestions respecting the design of the edition.

At my University, our plan is to use this project pedagogically in our English M.A. program, as well as in our Professional Writing program--a subsection of our Department that offers courses in Web design, and technical writing. Those instructors welcome the opportunity to use the project as a real-world application of what they teach in their courses. As both a scholarly and a technical project, moreover, it will help bridge a gap between our traditional and technical programs within the Department. Also, our University Computer Science Department has expressed interest in making pedagogical use of the project.

During my upcoming visit to Lancaster and over the course of the summer, I intend to crystallize plans for the following stages for the project:

1) advancing the design of the hypertext, modeled on the "Modern Painters" edition now nearing completion;

2) work out with Lancaster how a programmer and graphic designer at our University can learn from the Lancaster staff so as to be available for and knowledgable about troubleshooting on our side of the ocean;

2) obtaining estimates from archives for the cost of photographing the manuscripts, for use of the images in the edition;

3) exploring possibilities for student exchange, which Lancaster and my University are very interested in promoting;

4) making projections with our Computer Services Department for the eventual server demands for delivering the project;

5) laying out the timetable and tasks for the project, respecting both my scholarship and student participation.

Since I will start working out these details when I travel to Lancaster at the end of this month, I believe that I can arrive at a well-formed plan by the end of the summer, in time for the 2002 application deadline. Can you tell me at this time whether this initial proposal makes sense to you? If so, perhaps we can continue with a phone conversation about developing the proposal.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration,

David Hanson