He’s stretched the weblog model to accommodate a day-at-a-time presentation of an 1893 edition of Pepys’ diary. There’ll be a new beautifully annotated and cross-referenced entry every day and there’s enough background information and context to keep anybody interested in Pepys, London or the period happy. It’s a brilliant application of Movable Type and really does illuminate the text – readers can further annotate the text by adding comments. I hope the historians and biographers are paying attention – this is a twist on conventional historiography that could change the rules completely. Phil writes about the project at his own weblog. “I’m looking forward to reading it myself, and I thought this would be a good way to have lots of people read it with me” he says, disarmingly.
In which I try, after 25 years of blogging, to drop my ironic stance a bit.