About the WWP

The Brown University Women Writers Project is a long-term research and publication project focusing on early women’s writing in English. We have been working since 1988 on building an electronic collection of rare and less familiar texts, and on researching the complex issues involved in representing early printed texts in digital form.

As the publisher of Women Writers Online, the WWP now supports the work of innumerable faculty, students, and readers at hundreds of institutions from around the world, by providing access to rare materials by women that otherwise would go unread and untaught. Our annual conference, Women in the Archives, explores the connections between scholarly research and teaching, theories of the archive, and modes of digital representation. Through our exhibits we also offer opportunities for scholars to experiment with new modes of authoring and engagement with digital research tools.

As part of the Center for Digital Scholarship at Brown University, our staff are engaged in ongoing research into the technical and theoretical challenges of this work, and we share our expertise both at Brown and within the larger digital humanities community through papers, consultation, training workshops, and contributions to standards development. Our published materials and resources for teaching are all freely available to the public.

Our funding comes from several sources. The most significant is the licensing income from Women Writers Online, which makes it possible for the WWP to continue maintaining and expanding the WWO collection, but does not yet fully cover our operating expenses. We also receive support from grant funding, and by offering seminars and consultancy services to other projects.