6,000 Puritan Works Available for Free

[davejonescue]

Exactly this, yes, and/or perhaps under alphabetical folders "A", etc., (if possible please). But I wouldn't want to take much of your/anyone's time - I had a look online and saw it can be done using a script but I am not savvy enough to work it out myself.


I read parts of a couple last night and thought they worked really well! The vast majority of the individual files are small, I might test out the larger ones later today. I'd previously loaded Dave's 'PuritanInn' collection onto my Kindle and these seem to be better formatted.

Yeah, there is definitely strengths and weaknesses to each method. Personally, I prefer spaces between my paragraphs, headings, etc. Logan does not. Also, I personally like the idea of having all 6,000 works "bundled" in neat, compact "volumes" where the PDF's are bookmarked according to title, and you have all those works in a "collection" of around 250 or so books, rather than going through 6,000 files. Also, those bundled volumes makes it so you can read the works in the web browser, in PDF format, while still on the same site. But this is really what we are after. To offer them in so many different variations, that eventually, everyone is pleased to the best of our ability.

I am even thinking, after this is done, to go back and create a "the works of" series. Like, The Works of William Perkins, The Works of Thomas Watson, The Works of Praise-God Barebone, The Works of Robert Bolton, The Works of Edmund Bunny, etc. And make these combined or multi-volume ebooks. That way they are not as voluminous as the whole collection, but contain more works than a single volume.

 

[alexanderjames]

Yeah, there is definitely strengths and weaknesses to each method. Personally, I prefer spaces between my paragraphs, headings, etc.

I'm currently bulk converting into the AZW3 format in Calibre for my Kindle, including a line between paragraphs and reduced margins. I'll try to upload the results to Dropbox for anyone interested.

 

[davejonescue]

I'm currently bulk converting into the AZW3 format in Calibre for my Kindle, including a line between paragraphs and reduced margins. I'll try to upload the results to Dropbox for anyone interested.

Awesome, and this is what we really desire. That people would just share these works with each other. The more these texts are saved, the more they are spread, the more a posterity is preserved. One of our major goals was to preserve this body of work in a better way to read than facsimiles. And what you are doing is contributing to that cause. Thank you brother.

 

[Logan]

Exactly this, yes, and/or perhaps under alphabetical folders "A", etc., (if possible please). But I wouldn't want to take much of your/anyone's time - I had a look online and saw it can be done using a script but I am not savvy enough to work it out myself.

Just for you then, but don't tell anyone

split_epub.zip

drive.google.com

 

[Logan]

Personally, I prefer spaces between my paragraphs, headings, etc. Logan does not.

I'm currently bulk converting into the AZW3 format in Calibre for my Kindle, including a line between paragraphs

Lines between paragraphs ignores centuries of typography and is gross!

It's possible I have strong personal feelings about this

 

[Ryan&Amber2013]

I'm currently bulk converting into the AZW3 format in Calibre for my Kindle, including a line between paragraphs and reduced margins. I'll try to upload the results to Dropbox for anyone interested.

I would love to put it on my kindle.

 

[Logan]

I would love to put it on my kindle.

epub is easily converted to other formats like Kindle, or just email it to your Kindle account and they will convert it for you.

 

[jw]

Thanke ye alle for your labours. I am chequeing it oute nowe!

 

[Logan]

Thanke ye alle for your labours. I am chequeing it oute nowe!

Oh no! We goofed up and now Josh can't read the documents with all the standardized spellings!

By way of interest here are various ways one can spell (or typo) "authority" apparently (all of which were corrected in this project):

 

[alexanderjames]

Just for you then, but don't tell anyone

split_epub.zip

drive.google.com

Thank you kind sir!

 

[alexanderjames]

azw3 files converted from the epubs in subfolders (with incorrect typesetting ) - https://www.dropbox.com/s/2gakou60lrlbcx0/Project_Puritas_AZW3.zip?dl=0

 

[davejonescue]

Oh no! We goofed up and now Josh can't read the documents with all the standardized spellings!

By way of interest here are various ways one can spell (or typo) "authority" apparently (all of which were corrected in this project):
View attachment 10026

Thats what some may not get, lol. Didnt you say you got the corrective list down to a point where the only words that were left spelled like this showed up 50 times or less in the entire corpus of 6,000 works? After my research of the corrected texts, the only real works still littered with stuff like this were mainly authors who died prior to 1600 or so, since every word in the doc looked something like "annd twiss wase an unwyse moove to." The rest, cept for the transcribers error of missing letters, which was a result of mars on the EEBO microfilms, looks almost like any book you would find now. But, people will realize this more as they investigate the texts.

 

[Taylor]

I know you guys have put so much time and effort into this already, but I have to ask: Will there be periodic updates? In other words, if the word list gets a significant upgrade, will all these works be run through the program again to clean them up further?

 

[davejonescue]

I know you guys have put so much time and effort into this already, but I have to ask: Will there be periodic updates? In other words, if the word list gets a significant upgrade, will all these works be run through the program again to clean them up further?

Yes. And that is why Logan created a specific site for the collection of texts. So that he can update them collectively, all in one spot. He particularly had this in mind as kind of a "home-base" that people can be pointed to to do so. In his wisdom he rightly saw this as a better option than simply handing out individual links to various works.

 

[Pilgrim72]

Yes, definitely. Working on new words right now...

 

[Logan]

I know you guys have put so much time and effort into this already, but I have to ask: Will there be periodic updates? In other words, if the word list gets a significant upgrade, will all these works be run through the program again to clean them up further?

Yes, the possibility of a version 1.1 etc. is definitely there.

Here was my process: I took a dictionary text file. I took a KJV text file. Then I ran all the works through them and compiled lists of words that were NOT present in the dictionary or the KJV. In other words they have yet to be identified. A good number of these are names or in another language (Latin mostly). For example:



In all of the 6,000 or so works, these words appear only 53 times. Of the words we see here, most are latin, "Waleys" could be a name, and "Northampt" is likely an abbreviation. Three are probably regular words with a non-standard spelling: "presumption, History, and disproved". To validate, I generated another list where I display each occurrence of the word, with context:



So in this case, yes, the word in question should be "presumption".

I prioritized the words that appear the most frequently. So at this point, in the entirety of the 6,000 works, there are 831,813 words that have yet to be identified!

That sounds like a lot, but 452,329 of those unidentified words occur only once in those 6,000 works.

Only 65,805 unidentified words appear more than 10 times.

Correctly identifying a replacement word is easy in some situations, tricky in others (e.g., archaic words like "philargyry", which I think is an amazing word). Or it might involve hunting down a historical name and its proper spelling.

So while I think the work was prioritized correctly and the most common words have already been done, there is definitely still room for someone to do more work. If someone is interested in doing that and adding to the list of words that have been identified, I would definitely welcome that and would be happy to train that person.

 

[Taylor]

...archaic words like "philargyry"...

What are you talking about? I use that word every day! Since you men did all this work for free, you definitely are not philargyrous.

 

[ZackF]

Yes, the possibility of a version 1.1 etc. is definitely there.

Here was my process: I took a dictionary text file. I took a KJV text file. Then I ran all the works through them and compiled lists of words that were NOT present in the dictionary or the KJV. In other words they have yet to be identified. A good number of these are names or in another language (Latin mostly). For example:

View attachment 10029

In all of the 6,000 or so works, these words appear only 53 times. Of the words we see here, most are latin, "Waleys" could be a name, and "Northampt" is likely an abbreviation. Three are probably regular words with a non-standard spelling: "presumption, History, and disproved". To validate, I generated another list where I display each occurrence of the word, with context:

View attachment 10030

So in this case, yes, the word in question should be "presumption".

I prioritized the words that appear the most frequently. So at this point, in the entirety of the 6,000 works, there are 831,813 words that have yet to be identified!

That sounds like a lot, but 452,329 of those unidentified words occur only once in those 6,000 works.

Only 65,805 unidentified words appear more than 10 times.

Correctly identifying a replacement word is easy in some situations, tricky in others (e.g., archaic words like "philargyry", which I think is an amazing word). Or it might involve hunting down a historical name and its proper spelling.

So while I think the work was prioritized correctly and the most common words have already been done, there is definitely still room for someone to do more work. If someone is interested in doing that and adding to the list of words that have been identified, I would definitely welcome that and would be happy to train that person.

That is interesting. I threw some old writings in ChatRPT the other day as an experiment. I first gave the command, “modernize”. Secondly, with the same text I gave the command, “modernize only the spelling”. With the second command the word that was replaced was no longer in use or even recognizable. Other than the one change, the spelling was all that was altered.

 

[Steve Curtis]

Lines between paragraphs ignores centuries of typography and is gross!

It's possible I have strong personal feelings about this

You put a line between your paragraphs. Just sayin'...

 

[Morgan]

Thank you for your efforts in providing this.

 

[Parakaleo]

As someone who has contemplated plunking down $200 for the Puritan Hard Drive roughly 3 times a year for the last 7 years, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it, I am immensely grateful for this. I had wanted to own the Puritan Hard Drive mainly to have search capabilities and now I'm seeing Puritan Search will be way better for that, thanks to all the work that has been put in here. Praise the Lord.

 

[davejonescue]

As someone who has contemplated plunking down $200 for the Puritan Hard Drive roughly 3 times a year for the last 7 years, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it, I am immensely grateful for this. I had wanted to own the Puritan Hard Drive mainly to have search capabilities and now I'm seeing Puritan Search will be way better for that, thanks to all the work that has been put in here. Praise the Lord.

You are very welcome, and that was really one of our main goals from the beginning. Not to take away from TPHD in any way, but to offer this in a way that it would not be a financial burden to people not only owning it themselves, but being excited about it, wanting to share it, but then having to come up with the money to do so for every copy they would like to share. With this you can simply shoot the link to someone, or make flash drives for your friends or fellow ministers; no strings attached. While TPHD offers other things that we dont, like later Reformed works, video and audio sermons, lectures, etc., if you were looking for a software to specifically research Puritan literature, Puritan Search, in my humble opinion is defiantly a good choice. To my knowledge, it is the only existing software of fully searchable Puritan and Reformed Non-Conformist primary source material with so many works included, but also the specificity of being only from 1550-1700 or so. This is not the definitive list of authors or Puritan works, and we are always open to other authors we havent heard of or may have missed for a potential v1.1; but as of right now, to our searching capabilities, it is the most exhaustive collection of fully searchable text of the genre, from that era. We only ask that if it blesses you, tell someone who might also benefit from it about it. We wouldn't want someone to miss out on this resource who could use it. Thank you for your kind words on behalf of Project Puritas.

 

[PeterR]

The spelling "accessary" is still allowed by the Oxford English Dictionary. If you Google

"accessary" vs "accessory"

you will see several sites saying that in the sense in which (I am guessing, having seen it so used by Matthew Henry) it is used by the Puritans, it is still the spelling used in the context of English Law.

I knew nothing of this spelling before I started working on Matthew Henry on Wikisource.

 

[davejonescue]

Hello all, just a quick update: PuritanSearch 1.1 is out with quite a few extensive updates. www.puritansearch.org

We have included the link to the work in EEBO or Evans-TCP within each separate work within PuritanSearch, so those who have a question about the word corrections or need a scholarly reference can go right to the source.

We have also included 126 new authors covering about 600 works. This brings the total of authors and works in PuritanSearch to about 990 authors, and 6,600 works. The new additions are as follows:

American Puritans – New England
Adams_Eliphalet - 1677-1753, Adams_William - 1650-1685, Allen_James - 1632-1710, Barnard_John - 1681-1770, Baxter_Joseph - 1676-1745, Belcher_Samuel - 1639-1714, Buckingham_Stephen - 1675-1746, Bulkley_John - 1679-1731, Cheever_Samuel - 1639-1724, Clap_Nathaniel - 1669-1745, Collins_Nathaniel - 1677-1756, Colman_Benjamin - 1673-1747, Cotton_Rowland - 1667-1722, Cotton_Seaborn - 1633-1686, Crosby_Thomas - 1635-1702, Danforth_John - 1660-1730, Danforth_Samuel - 1666-1727, Dwight_Josiah - 1671-1748, Edwards_Jonathan - 1703-1758, Edwards_Timothy - 1678-1725, Estabrook_Joseph - 1640-1711, Estabrook_Samuel - 1674-1727, Fiske_Sarah - 1627-1692, Fitch_James - 1622-1702, Foxcroft_Thomas - 1697-1769, Gibbs_Henry - 1668-1723, Gookin_Daniel - 1612-1687, Hale_John - 1636-1700, Haynes_Lemuel - 1753-1833, Higginson_John - 1616-1708, Hooker_Samuel - 1635-1697, Hosmer_Stephen - 1679-1749, Hubbard_William - 1621-1704, Mather_Azariah - 1685-1737, Mather_Eleazar - 1637-1669, Mather_Warham - 1666-1745, Mitchel_Jonathan - 1624-1668, Moodey_Joshua - 1633-1697, Moss_Joseph - 1679-1732, Niles_Samuel - 1674-1762, Norton_John - 1651-1716, Noyes_James - 1608-1656, Noyes_Nicholas - 1647-1717, Pemberton_Ebenezer - 1672-1717, Prentice_John - 1682-1748, Rawson_Grindal - 1659-1715, Richardson_John - 1580-1654, Richardson_John - 1647-1696, Rogers_John - 1666-1745, Rowlandson_Joseph - 1631-1678, Saltonstall_Gurdon - 1666-1724, Sewall_Joseph - 1688-1769, Shepard Jr_Thomas - 1635-1702, Shepard_Jeremiah - 1648-1720, Stoddard_Solomon - 1643-1729, Stone_Nathaneal - 1667-1755, Stoughton_William - 1632-1701, Symmes_Thomas - 1678-1725, Thatcher_Peter - 1651-1727, Tompson_Benjamin - 1642-1714, Wadsworth_Benjamin - 1670-1737, Walter_Nehemiah - 1663-1750, White_John - 1677-1760, Whitefield_George - 1714-1770, Williams_John - 1664-1729, Williams_William - 1665-1741, Winthrop_John - 1588-1649, Wise_Jeremiah - 1679-1756, Wise_John - 1652-1725,

Dutch Puritans - Nadere Reformatie
Apollonius_Willem - 1602-1657, Appelius_Johannes - nd, Bekker_Balthasar - 1634-1698, Cats_Jacob - 1577-1660, Marnix_Phillips - 1538-1598, Taffin_Jean - 1529-1602, Teellinck_Willem - 1579-1629,

Scottish Puritans – Covenanters
Alesius_Alexander - 1500-1565, Balcanquhall_Walter - 1586-1645, Boston_Thomas - 1676-1732, Boyd_Robert - 1578-1627, Boyd_Zacharie - 1585-1653, Bruce_Michael - 1634-1693, Cameron_John - 1679-1625, Cant_Andrew - 1590-1663, Cargill_Donald - 1619-1681, Carstairs_John - fl 1646-1660, Carstares_William - 1649-1715, Colvill_William - d 1675, Craig_John - 1512-1600, Davidson_John - 1520-1572, Davidson_John - 1549-1603, Dick_John - d 1684, Douglas_Robert - 1594-1674, Fergusson_David - d 1598, Flemming_Robert - 1630-1694, Forbes_Patrick - 1564-1635, Forrester_Thomas - 1635-1706, Gillespie_Patrick - 1617-1675, Guild_William - 1586-1657, Guthrie_James - 1612-1661, Hamilton_Patrick - 1504-1528, Hay_George - d 1588, Jameson_William - 1689-1720, Johnsone_John - fl 1530, Kid-King_John - d 1679, Kirkwood_James - 1650-1708, Lindsay_David - 1490-1555, Lindsay_David - 1566-1627, Livingstone_John - 1603-1672, Makemie_Francis - 1658-1708, Meldrum_George - 1635-1709, Melville_James - 1556-1614, Napier_John - 1550-1617, Petrie_Alexander - 1594-1662, Pont_Robert - 1524-1606, Renwick_James - 1662-1688, Shields_Alexander - 1660-1700, Simson_Alexander - 1570-1639, Simson_Archibald - 1564-1628, Simson_Patrick - 1556-1618, Spalding_John - 1633-1699, Stewart_James - 1635-1713, Webster_James - 1658-1720, Wedderburn_John - 1500-1556, Welch_John - 1568-1622, Young_Thomas - 1587-1655,

Also, the 4 categories are presented in a neat tree, expandable and then configured by last name, and each name includes the dates of the author.
Hope this blesses someone; God Bless.

 

[JennyGeddes]

Thank you, brothers!

 

[davejonescue]

Thank you, brothers!

Our pleasure. If it blesses you, all we ask is that you tell someone else who may enjoy it or find it of use.

 

[JennyGeddes]

Our pleasure. If it blesses you, all we ask is that you tell someone else who may enjoy it or find it of use.

Will do!

 

[alexanderjames]

How does it work for Dutch ones? Are they from early translations?

 

[davejonescue]

How does it work for Dutch ones? Are they from early translations?

While we did find a website that offers many of the Dutch Puritans in DOCX format that can be easily translated with DeepL or Google Translate, here, we thought it better, for sake of clarity and the possibility of mistranslation to only include Dutch Puritans with works in EEBO TCP or Evans TCP. This consists of only 10 works; but I think Dr. Beeke mentioned at the Puritan conference that of all the books the Dutch translated from the Puritans from English to Dutch, that Dutch books translated from Dutch to English were less than 20. We would have like to included Brakel, but CRS is copyrighted by RHB so we didnt, wanting to make sure all works included in Puritan Search were clear of any copyright restrictions. But yes, all 10 of the works from Dutch Puritans in the program are English translations of the Dutch done in the 17th century.