This exhibit plots the place names from where Byron wrote his letters during his first Mediterranean Tour. The seventy-six letters that Byron wrote to sixteen correspondents as well as the twenty that he received from ten contain much spatial information; and the plotting of the letters over time, location and correspondent helps us to understand better how Byron responded to the spirit of place through his letter-writing.

To negotiate the exhibit, the visitor has two main options. At the bottom of the map, one will find a timeline. The timeline extends from the 30 June 1809 to 7 July 1811 in increments of a single day. By clicking on each entry on the timeline, one will have access to the Dublin Core -- the letter's metadata -- and one can view the complete letter in Omeka. Hovering over each blue point on the map reveals the letter written there. Clicking on one of the letter titles in the vertical list to the right of the map brings you to the place of composition on the map as well as to the letter's place in the timeline below. Zooming out reveals a georectified historical map from 1814 ("Turkey_1814"). 

The timeline is informative because it reveals that Byron often wrote letters in bunches interspersed with significant periods of epistolary silence. The blue points on the map reveal the locations of intense letter-writing activity: Athens, Constantinople, Malta. By zooming in or out on each location, the reader will receive a heightenend impression of the distances Byron travelled.

If one returns to the home page and selects the icon "Browse Items," one will have access to all of the letters in the collection including those written between correspondents known to Byron. If one then selects "Browse by Tag," a selection of tags will appear. The size of each tag's font is a function of the frequency of the tag in the collection. The tags offer the reader a powerful search tool.

PMC July 2016, revised 9 October 2017

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