Corpus of Women's Instructive Texts in English (CoWITE18) (1700-1799)

CoWITE18: The 18th Century Sub-Corpus of the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in EnglishCoWITE18 is a purpose-built sub-corpus of the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English (CoWITE), specifically designed to support the linguistic study of instructive texts authored by women in the 18th century. This sub-corpus comprises transcribed and annotated digital editions of works written by British women and published between 1700 and 1799. The included texts are primarily examples of instructive prose, covering genres such as household guides, conduct books, recipe collections, and medical treatises intended for a female readership or reflecting a woman’s perspective.

Structure and ContentsCoWITE18 files follow a standardized encoding scheme and include:• Textual genre identification (e.g., domestic manual, herbal remedy collection, cookery text)• Author metadata (name, sex, place and date of publication)• Publication details (publisher, place, year)• Linguistic annotation (normalized spelling, part-of-speech tagging)• Thematic classification (e.g., childcare, food preparation, moral education, home medicine)

Goals and ApplicationsThe primary aim of CoWITE18 is to provide reliable empirical data for the analysis of the interpersonal and didactic strategies employed by female writers in the 18th century. Researchers may use the corpus to investigate morphological, syntactic, discourse, and pragmatic aspects of language in historical instructive prose.

Compilation and AccessThis sub-corpus is curated and updated by Francisco Alonso-Almeida and colleagues at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. All texts are transcribed from original editions preserved in historical archives and digital collections, ensuring scholarly accuracy and usability. The editorial team continues to revise and expand the corpus to support ongoing research.

CoWITE18 forms part of the broader CoWITE initiative, which covers women’s instructive writing from 1550 to 1900. It complements other sub-corpora (CoWITE16, CoWITE17, CoWITE19) and enables comparative diachronic studies of female-authored instructional discourse across three centuries.