Introducing Rotunda: A collection of digital scholarship from the Electronic Imprint of the University of Virginia Press

The Dolley Madison Digital Edition

Edited by Holly Shulman

ISBN 0-8139-2291-7

"[An] auspicious debut. . . .Highly recommended. All collections."
—CHOICE

"Highly recommended for all public, academic, and special libraries serving researchers in history, gender studies, or political science. . . .[The Dolley Madison Digital Edition] bodes well both for the future of online scholarship and Rotunda."
—Cheryl LaGuardia, Library Journal

"Technology has long tantalized historians with promises for the future. The Dolley Madison Digital Edition, the first offering from the University of Virginia Press's Electronic Imprint, makes good on all those promises. Capacious and flexible, this online archive of Dolley Madison's correspondence welcomes ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitters’ alike, with the ability to search thematically as well as by keyword. Scholars of the period and their students can create their own searches, allowing them to research at the richest levels. This is the future and it looks good!"
—Catherine Allgor, University of California at Riverside, author of Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government

Dolley Payne Madison was the most important First Lady of the nineteenth century, creating a standard that survives to this day. The Dolley Madison Digital Edition will be the first-ever complete edition of all of her known correspondence, distinguished by innovative, thorough scholarly preparation and enhanced by the flexibility and access afforded by digital technology.

This first installment contains over 700 letters, through June 1836, with some 2,000 additional letters to follow in periodic updates. An XML-based archive, the Digital Edition offers a powerful selection of search tools, allowing users to perform simple or advanced searches by period, correspondent, or topic. The letters may also be accessed directly through a comprehensive, sortable list or read in chronological order.

Each letter appears with a summary, plus crosslinks to related letters and glossary entries for personal names and titles. An invaluable resource in itself, the extensive glossary identifies more than 1,000 people and books referred to in the letters, providing a unique biographical view on the elites of the early Republic. The glossary will also identify places, books, even ships, to set each letter in the most accurate context possible.

A unique demonstration of the virtues of informal power, Dolley Madison’s correspondence provides us with an unprecedented view on the Jefferson and Madison administrations, the early history of the White House and Washington, D.C., slavery in the South, and the era’s distinct manners and morals.

"A substantial contribution to the field. . . . The tremendous work of collecting, transcribing, and verifying the correspondence to and from Dolley Madison is impressive in its own right, but the accessibility, clarity of format, and potential uses of the edition make this all the more significant."
—Martha J. King, Associate Editor, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University

"This project is well conceptualized, well executed, and extremely valuable. . . . The editors have created an accessible scholarly edition and have supplied ancillary explanatory material that will be useful to scholars and laypersons alike."
— Cynthia A. Kierner, University of North Carolina, author of Revolutionary America, 1750-1815: Sources and Interpretation

Rotunda is made possible by generous grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the President's Office of the University of Virginia

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Holly Shulman is Research Associate Professor in Studies in Women and Gender at the University of Virginia and the editor, with David B. Mattern, of The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison (Virginia).