Increasing access to ephemeral prints: How to construct and analyze a dataset from the Golden Age of literature in nineteenth‐century Denmark

Abstract

Abstract“Archives” and “distant reading” have become common concepts in literary criticism following the mass digitization of books and newspapers. Though these two sources provide gigantic amounts of data available in digitized collections and catalogues, they rarely encompass all printed texts preserved from any given period. A third type is mostly left out: ephemeral prints. This poses a problem for literary bibliographies. The major Danish collection holds 6 kilometers of rarely registered prints. The article shows how to catalogue and then analyze metadata from 825 printed songs circulating in what was then a major venue in the Danish public sphere: the Royal Copenhagen Shooting Association. Following Katherine Bode's proposals for writing data‐rich literary history, I first sum up collection policies in Scandinavian national libraries. The following questions are then examined: How did ephemera circulate inside the association and in the broader public? Which agents were involved in song‐production? How many of these occasional songs entered the authoritative Collected Works on which scholars often rely—and in which forms? Might political contexts explain fluctuations in the number of songs printed and the choice of foreign melodies? In most cases, the overview gained by quantitative analysis facilitates the subsequent closer, qualitative analysis.