Distant Reader - subject-newcastleUponTyneEngland-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 5 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 91,157 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 18,231 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 88. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

shall, newcastle, town, page, river, see, king, chap, one, mayor, ships, great, men, may, many, burgesses, coals, time, fo, ballast, england, two, law, every, will, made, ship, within, stat, called, now, good, year, lord, people, free, others, first, oath, without, laws, tyne, man, like, sea, mr, make, also, northumberland, castle

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Englands grievance discovered, in relation to the coal-trade with the map of the river of Tine, and situation of the town and corporation of Newcastle : the tyrannical oppression of those magistrates, their charters and grants, the several tryals, depositions, and judgements obtained against them : with a breviate of several statutes proving repugnant to their actings : with proposals for reducing the excessive rates of coals for the future, and the rise of their grants, appearing in this book / by Ralph Gardiner ..., Chorographia, or, A survey of Newcastle upon Tine the estate of this country under the Romans : the building of the famous wall of the Piets, by the Romans : the ancient town of Pandon : a briefe description of the town, walls, wards, churches, religious houses, streets, markets, fairs, river and commodities, with the suburbs : the ancient and present government of the town : as also, a relation of the county of Northumberland, which was the bulwark for England, against the introdes of the Scots : their many castles and towers : their ancient Cheviot-Hills, of Tinedale, and Reedsdale, with the inhabitants., and A true experimentall and exact relation upon that famous and renovvned siege of Nevvcastle, the diverse conflicts and occurrances fell out there during the time of ten weeks and odde dayes: and of that mightie and marveilous storming therof, with power, policie, and prudent plots of warre. Together with a succinct commentarie upon the battell of Bowdon Hill, and that victorious battell of York or Marston Moore, never to be forgotten. / By him who was an eye witnesse to the siege of Nevvcastle, William Lithgovv..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

see chap, see stat, letters pattents, see ch, king john, king henry, early english, english books, king edward, king james, ye shall, per annum, seven miles, books online, full sea, low water, cast ballast, thousand pounds, twenty shillings, picts wall, two hundred, eight pence, queen elizabeth, page images, good men, shall pay, one hundred, party grieved, excessive rates, many ships, place called, hundred pound, free hoast, honest men, one shilling, ever hereafter, text creation, twenty years, creation partnership, king charles, shall make, two pence, cast away, sir william, true relation, six aldermen, tinmouth castle, late queen, king ordains, present parliament

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A true experimentall and exact relation upon that famous and renovvned siege of Nevvcastle, the diverse conflicts and occurrances fell out there during the time of ten weeks and odde dayes: and of that mightie and marveilous storming therof, with power, policie, and prudent plots of warre. Together with a succinct commentarie upon the battell of Bowdon Hill, and that victorious battell of York or Marston Moore, never to be forgotten. / By him who was an eye witnesse to the siege of Nevvcastle, William Lithgovv. A True relation of the taking of Newcastle by the Scots by storm, on the 19 of October, 1644 as it was certified to a worthy member of the House of Commons, from one of the commissioners there and from another gentleman, both which were eye-witnesses of it : together with a true relation of the state of Tinmouth Castle, and of the plague in it, and that it is likely shortly to be surrendered., and The town of New-Castle upon Tine having elected Sir William Blacket, Baronet; and Sir Ralph Carr, Knight. their burgesses, in the late Parliament, dissolved by his Majesties proclamation, bearing date the 18th. day of January 1680. Sir William Blacket had the honour of dying in that service, upon which the said town unanimously chose their present mayor Nathaniel Johnson Esq; who accordingly this last session of Parliament gave his attendance at Westminster, and had the honour of knighthood conferred on him by his Majesty. Sir Nathaniel''s residence being at present in London, the said town of New-Castle sent him the following letter.

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

newcastle, town, river, lord, castle, york, william, west, towne, tower, tcp, successors, souldiers, sir, shields, sea, scots, romans, picts, page, oath, north, mayor, like, laws, law, king, gate, county, corporation, coals, charter, chap, calendar, burgesses, ballast, armie

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be said, and The town of New-Castle upon Tine having elected Sir William Blacket, Baronet; and Sir Ralph Carr, Knight. their burgesses, in the late Parliament, dissolved by his Majesties proclamation, bearing date the 18th. day of January 1680. Sir William Blacket had the honour of dying in that service, upon which the said town unanimously chose their present mayor Nathaniel Johnson Esq; who accordingly this last session of Parliament gave his attendance at Westminster, and had the honour of knighthood conferred on him by his Majesty. Sir Nathaniel''s residence being at present in London, the said town of New-Castle sent him the following letter is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

men, ships, time, a, year, coals, people, ship, others, b, man, reason, person, persons, day, power, place, part, parts, use, d, years, water, shillings, text, page, chap, ballast, pounds, none, e, name, hath, prison, kings, goods, edw, a., pound, c, things, shoars, party, times, p., ground, pence, side, cause, miles

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

be, is, said, was, have, being, were, see, are, had, do, made, called, make, been, having, did, cast, granted, done, come, enacted, take, give, according, taken, pay, sent, brought, put, given, set, let, built, sell, sold, kept, got, came, gave, found, paid, lost, say, belonging, aforesaid, receive, committed, keep, used

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

newcastle, c., town, river, page, king, mayor, chap, burgesses, england, fo, law, lord, stat, tyne, ballast, mr., sea, northumberland, oath, castle, parliament, queen, shields, county, john, master, london, towne, laws, charter, william, corporation, coals, north, god, court, c, henry, sir, port, thomas, durham, aldermen, trade, liberties, ed, statute, justice, james

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

their, his, they, it, them, he, i, him, our, her, your, you, themselves, my, himself, we, she, me, us, thy, its, theirs, ye, yours, thee, ours, mine, hers

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

other, such, same, great, many, own, good, first, more, free, poor, ancient, common, like, much, most, late, true, present, famous, full, whole, second, rich, next, high, several, due, third, last, former, old, dead, little, hoast, early, certain, better, new, able, low, excessive, convenient, large, english, open, aforesaid, sufficient, strong, ready

not, so, then, now, up, also, as, in, thereof, onely, more, well, out, ever, there, never, often, down, here, again, therefore, most, away, further, whatsoever, otherwise, much, too, only, first, all, very, yet, therein, humbly, else, thus, indeed, forth, before, long, formerly, truly, over, off, sometimes, likewise, especially, together, just

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.