Genetic editions of Hans Christian Andersen's oeuvre

Holger Berg

The community meetings are held online using this link, usually on the first Tuesday of each month at 17:00 CET/CEST. No registration is required to attend. We warmly invite you to propose topics info@e-editiones.org for the forthcoming meetings.

Community meetup on March 04, 2025 at 17:00 CET.

Hans Christian Andersen died 150 years ago, but his legacy is thriving. The research center in Andersen´s native town Odense aids readers and researchers alike who want to explore this rich oeuvre. To this aim, we have over the course of just four years launched three digital editions. All three have been produced with TEI Publisher.

In the talk at the community meetup, I first outline the process that helped us at the centre to reach to the current state.

Secondly, I then single out three building blocks that are either new additions to TEI Publisher or could become such:

  • Fast search through tables, e.g., on the main landing page (via zing-grid adapted by Magdalena Turska).
  • Draggable panels with display of, e.g., facsimiles (jsPanel adapted by Jörn Turner).
  • Synoptic visualizations of two, three or more textual variants (via CollateX customized by Karsten Kynde).

As the names in the parentheses indicate, the modules have been crafted by experts within our community. The talk should thereby demonstrate how TEI Publisher delivers one of its main promises: Empowering academics (like myself) to model and build digital scholarly editions without having to become programmers.

In the final dialogue we might discuss whether the two latter building blocks could be bundled with related elements to form a distinct genetic profile in future versions of TEI Publisher? This might aid the creation of coming genetic digital scholarly editions.

References

  • The Fairy Tales and Stories of Hans Christian Andersen translated by John Irons, https://hca.sdu.dk/tales.
  • H.C. Andersens samlede værker, https://hca.sdu.dk/sv (Danish study edition printed in 18 volumes from 2003 to 2007; digitized in 18 months 2023-24; main address www.hcandersen.dk).
  • Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Stories – The digital manuscript edition, https://hca.sdu.dk/manus (genetic DSE in Danish; current stage 2020-2026; planned final stage 2026-32).
  • All three editions are currently in TEI Publisher 9.0. The source code for the manuscript edition will be released later during 2025.

The event took place on Tuesday the 12th of November from 17:00 till 18:00 CET on Jitsi.