Ironically, seeing as I have very little experience with Christianity in any of its forms—personal, academic, or anything in between—I seem to have been gravitating toward religious texts in this course. This is probably due to the time period in which we’ve been working, but hey—it works, and I’m learning.
This week, we pored over the English Short Title Catalogue (which WordPress is trying to tell me is spelled wrong because I’m in the United States) in search of books published a) prior to 1800, and b) in at least three different places. I accidentally stumbled upon John Bunyan’s “Come and welcome to Jesus Christ” while searching for the very few records of books I’ve worked with personally.
The process of getting and refining all the information was messy, to say the least, but barring the six straight hours spent troubleshooting installation (and no, I’m not exaggerating), I’ll admit that it went smoother than expected in the end. It’s not a map that boasts fifty different cities of publication, but—thanks to OpenRefine, Zotero, Google Maps, and a lot of help from Dr. Benjamin Pauley (thank you, thank you, thank you)—it’s a functioning map, and an accurate one at that.
Behold, a map that answers the burning question that I’m sure has been plaguing you since birth: where was John Bunyan’s “Come and welcome to Jesus Christ” published?