Datasets:

biglam
/

lampeter_corpus

id stringlengths 7 8	text stringlengths 690 109k	date date64	genre stringclasses 6 values	head stringlengths 0 356	title stringlengths 12 244
EcA1641	To contend with men that deny their owne publike Acts, is a hard taske; yet for better manifestation of truth to the Honourable House of Commons, its necessary that somewhat more be said, touching the WineProiect. IT hath been already set forth, and plainely shewed, even by the orders of Vintners Hall. That the retaili...	1641-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	A Reply to a most untrue Relation made, and set forth in Print, by certaine Vintners, in excuse of their Wine Proiect.	A reply to a most untrue relation [...] by certaine vintners, in excuse of their wine project.
EcA1652	IT hath been a thing for many years generally received, That the Design of Spain (and which, to this daie, hee still in his Councils carrie's on) is, to get the Universal Monarchie of Christendom. Nor is it a thing less true (how little soëver observed) that our Neighbors [the Dutch] (after they had settled their Liber...	1652-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	THE ADVOCATE: OR, A NARRATIVE Of the state and condition of things between the English and Dutch Nation, in relation to Trade, and the consequences depending thereupon, to either Common-wealth; as it was presented in August 1651.	The Advocate.
EcA1668	I Presume, there are few Englishmen so disloyal to their Prince, or, at least, so treacherous treacherons to their Country, who do not wish, that his Majesties real Occasions might be speedily supplyed, and his Majesty thereby enabled fully to perform the Covenants on his part, in that important League, which he hath...	1668-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	Propos. 1. It will supply his Majesties present wants, Even by a Land Tax, if better Expedients be not offered, which both the Landlord and Tenant may afford once more to admit, being eased and recompensed another way. The Usurer (who could never yet be taxed to any purpose, in effect, contributing equally with him.	A discourse ,shewing the many advantages which will accrue to this kingdom by the abatement of usury [...]
EcA1676	HAving lately seen a Pamphlet under the Title of The Mystery of the New-fashioned Goldsmiths or Bankers, &c. I presently conjectured what I found it to be in the Reading; A prosecution of the design managed of late by so many clandestine whisperings of Jealousie into the Ears of unwary People, and the spreading of fals...	1676-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	An Enquiry into the Grounds of a late Pamphlet Entituled, THE MYSTERY OF THE New-fashioned Goldsmiths, or Bankers, &c.	Is not the hand of Joab in all this? Or An enquiry into the grounds of a late pamphlet intituled, The mystery of the new-fashioned-goldsmiths or bankers, &c. [...]
EcA1681	"FOrasmuch as there is a very great Complaint in most of the Market-Towns in this Kingdom, of the Gr(...TRUNCATED)	1681-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	SECT. I. The Introduction.	The Trade of England Revived: And the Abuses thereof Rectified [...]
EcA1697	"THE many Objections formerly made against the East-India Trade, because was carried on by the Expor(...TRUNCATED)	1697-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	"\nSome Considerations upon Reading a Treatise, Intituled, An Essay on the East-India Trade. By the (...TRUNCATED)	England and East India inconsistent in their manufactures [...]
EcA1705	"\n\nThe Influence of the Bank considerable. NOtwithstanding that the Bank of England is a Subject t(...TRUNCATED)	1705-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	THE Introduction.	Remarks upon the Bank of England [...]
EcA1714	"THERE has been a Paper already offered to the Publick, concerning the State of the Sugar Plantation(...TRUNCATED)	1714-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	SOME OBSERVATIONS, SHEWING The DANGER of Losing the TRADE of the Sugar Colonies, &c.	Some observations, shewing the danger of losing the trade of the sugar colonies
EcA1720	"THE Miscarriage of the Naval StoreBill last Session of Parliament, leading several Gentlemen to enq(...TRUNCATED)	1720-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	A LETTER TO A Member of Parliament.	A letter to a member of parliament, concerning the naval store-bill, brought in last session [...]
EcA1731	"IT is not possible that the Island of Barbadoes in particular, without making less Sugar, can ever (...TRUNCATED)	1731-01-01T00:00:00	Economy	REMARKS Upon a BOOK, Entituled, The Present State of the Sugar Colonies considered, &c.	Remarks upon a book, entituled, the present state of the sugar colonies consider'd

End of preview. Expand in Data Studio

Dataset Card for lampeter_corpus

Dataset Summary

The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts is a collection of texts on various subject matter published between 1640 and 1740, a time that was marked by the rise of mass publication, the development of public discourse in many areas of everyday life and last but not least, the standardisation of British English. Each text belongs to one of the following genres: Law, Economy, Religion, Politics, Science, Miscellaneous

Supported Tasks and Leaderboards

text-classification: This dataset comes with dates and genre classifications for each text which can be used to finetune a model for text classification.

Languages

The text in the dataset is British English. The associated BCP-47 code is en-GB

Dataset Structure

Data Instances

A typical data point contains an id, a text, the head of the text (which can be missing on some occasions) and the title. The two features which can be used for classification are date, which is the year of publication and genre which classifies the text into one of six broad areas.

{
'id': 'SciB1735', 
'text': '\nI. WHEN I read your Defence of the British Mathematicians, I could not, Sir, but admire your Courage in asserting with such undoubting Assurance things so easily disproved. This to me seemed unaccountable, till I reflected on what you say (p. 32.) when upon my having appealed to every thinking Reader, whether it be possible to frame any clear Conception of Fluxions, you express yourself in the following manner, "Pray, Sir, who are those thinking Readers you ap\npeal to? Are they Geometricians, or Persons wholly ignorant of Geometry? If the former, I leave it to them: If the latter, I ask how well are they qualified to judge of the Method of Fluxions"? It must be acknowledged you seem by this Dilemma secure in the favour of one Part of your Readers, and the ignorance of the other. I am nevertheless persuaded there are fair and candid Men among the Mathematicians. And for those who are not Mathematicians, I shall endeavour so to unveil this Mystery, [TRUNCATED]', 
'date': '1735', 
'genre': 'Science', '
head': 'A DEFENCE OF FREE-THINKING IN Mathematics; &c.\n', 
'title': 'A defence of free-thinking in mathematics [...]'
}

Data Fields

The dataset contains the following fields:

id: Unique identifier("string"),
text: ext in the document("string"),
date: Date of publication("date64"),
genre: Broad classification("string"),
head: Often same as title. Can be missing("string"),
title: Title of document("string")

Data Splits

Train: 120

Dataset Creation

Curation Rationale

The period covered by the Lampeter Corpus, 1640 to 1740, marks a crucial period in English history and the elaboration of English as a multi-purpose language. The texts selected for the corpus reflect the standardisation process of English and historical developments between the outbreak of the Civil War and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. To meet the needs of linguists and historians alike, the Lampeter project has attempted to create a balanced corpus rather than a randomly chosen archive or collection. A balanced corpus, then, is characterised by several transparent sampling criteria.

Source Data

Initial Data Collection and Normalization

The original data is selected according to the following criteria:

Complete texts only, including dedications, prefaces, postscripts, etc.
Texts are of varying length, ranging from c. 3,000 to c. 20,000 words.
Each author appears only once to avoid idiosyncratic language use.
Major literary figures of the time were excluded since their writing style can be studied in other, existing collections.
Generally, only first editions of the texts; later editions only if changes were made by the original authors, thus ensuring the authenticity of the language.