Editors’ Note

Abstract

Approaching its golden anniversary volume, newly affiliated with Penn State University Press, fully digitized and available through the Scholarly Publishing Collective, under the direction of a fresh pair of coeditors, and with its purview expanded to include Victorian and Edwardian literature, art, and culture, the Victorians Institute Journal is well positioned for its second half century of publication.The present volume features articles with a chronological range from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, a geographical scope from Britain to Persia to China, and a generic array that includes cartoons, fiction, nursery rhymes, poetry, and travel narratives. It also highlights the journal’s investment in the intersection between research and pedagogy and, with one rare and one set of previously unpublished texts, VIJ’s historical commitment to expanding the canon of materials available for research and teaching in years to come. The volume’s concluding reviews offer summative evaluations of five recent books in the field.Readers will also find an entirely new section, “Digital Deliverables,” focused on current digital humanities research. With one essay from the general editor of an established and highly visible project, the Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education (COVE), and the other from the founding directors of an initiative, the Digital Dickens Notes Project, that is just taking off, these two pieces offer complementary perspectives on the exciting payoffs and potential of such computationally enhanced work in the long nineteenth century and beyond. We hope to replicate this format in future volumes, perhaps from those inspired by the work featured here to expand their own skills and approaches.Finally, we would like to recognize the generous and dedicated contributions of retiring editor, Don Richard Cox (Emeritus Professor of English, University of Tennessee). Since 2014, Don has brought to VIJ an invaluable depth of knowledge and experience and has worked tirelessly to enhance the quality and scope of the journal. Don was also key in negotiating our current publication contract with Penn State University Press. We are indebted to Don for his devoted and myriad labors and are most pleased that he will continue to be involved in the journal as a member of the Advisory Board.