Using the Carpenter Archive
The Edward Carpenter Archive
by Simon Dawson

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About edwardcarpenter.net

A short note about why the archive exists

There are many websites ABOUT Edward Carpenter, who is one of my favourite authors, but there are few websites BY Carpenter (i.e. websites which give you access to many of his texts.) His works are out of print so it can be difficult to study what he said unless you buy lots of second hand books.

My aim in this website is to help you read his actual words, by providing a simple, easy to use archive of my favourite Carpenter texts. I want to be academically rigorous, so I will include the full text, with references.

It will have to start off small, but hopefully it will grow as the months and years go by.

If you have any comments on the website, or requests about what you what to see, then please get in touch. Use the comment page and drop me a line

Simon Dawson - July 2000



Searching the Archive

In his life Edward Carpenter wrote about a huge variety of subjects, so unless you know exactly what you are looking for, it can be difficult to find your way to texts that interest you.

This section contains a few hints on how to use this website to find the Carpenter texts that interest you.

Searching by book title

If you know the book or pamphlet title that you want, then a look at the Bibliography (compiled in 1916) will be a good start.

If the book you want is on this website, then a link will take you to the Carpenter Archive Main Index which should guide you to the correct chapters. If the book is not on this website, then there should be enough information on the Bibliography page to start searching libraries and internet-based second-hand bookshops. Most of his books are available, and few are very expensive.

Searching by Subject Matter or Key-word

The Carpenter Site Search page links to the BeSeen search engine, which has indexed the entire site and allows on-line key-word searches.

General Browsing

Many people come to Carpenter knowing little about him but, for whatever reason, are motivated to explore his works. It is possible to pick any book whose title sounds interesting, perhaps after browsing through a page or two. That sort of thing is entirely possible on this website. But if you want to do a bit of research first, and learn a bit about Carpenter and his works, there are a few pages on the website which can give a quick overview, and perhaps point you towards the books you want to read.




Archive Text Conventions

I have tried to use the same text conventions on every page throughout the archive

As far as possible I have used the exact text copied from the book. By modern eyes this will have overlong paragraphs, over-use of italics, and overcomplicated punctuation, but that's what Carpenter wrote, so who am I to change it.

The main text will be in black. Normally "quotations" or italicised text will be in green to help with emphasis. Links to Other Pages will be in blue as per normal.

On the few occasions when I feel the need to make my own comments as website editor (mainly in the Main Index) then my comments will be in red to clearly distiguish my words from Carpenters.

The Edward Carpenter Archive pages are very text heavy and it can sometimes be difficult to read large blocks of text on a computer screen.

Try the following techniques:

  1. Save the web-page to your own computer, or print it out, to reduce on-line time.
  2. Adjust the size of the screen text to make it easier to read.
    - On Netscape go to -View- and then -Increase/Decrease Font-.
    - Internet Explorer users go to -View- and then -Text Size-.
  3. Reduce the width of the browser window. Narrower columns of text are easier to read.

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