Distant Reader - subject-publicWelfare-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 13 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 75,343 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 5,795 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 85. 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, may, will, poor, persons, one, work, bee, text, peace, iustices, euery, time, houses, within, house, two, made, good, parish, also, tcp, place, thereof, take, places, shal, infected, without, great, office, person, poore, sayd, england, vpon, english, london, make, men, many, every, well, people, either, reliefe, common, first, set, able

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Certaine statutes especially selected, and commanded by his Maiestie to be carefully put in execution by all iustices, and other officers of the peace throughout the realme with his Maiesties proclamation for further direction for executing the same. Also certaine orders thought meete by his Maiestie and his Priuie Counsell, to bee put in execution, together with sundry good rules, preseruatiues, and medicines against the infection of the plague, set downe by the Colledge of the Physicians vpon his Maiesties speciall command: as also a decree of the Starre-Chamber, concerning buildings and in-mates., A further discoverie of the office of publick addresse for accommodations, and England''s weal & prosperity proposed: or, Reasons for erecting publick vvork-houses in every county, for the speedy promoting of industry and the woollen manufactory, shewing how the wealth of the nation may be encreased, many hundred thousand pounds per annum. And also that many thousand persons may be so reformed, to their own and the whole kingdoms present and future wealth and glory, that there may no more be a begger bred up in the nation. Humbly offered to the consideration of the great wisdom of the nation, and presented to the honourable House of Commons. By R. Haines. To which is added A model of government for such works houses prepared by the same author, and printed in the year (79) intended to have been presented to the last Parliament. Pursuant to a breviate of proposals for the promoting of industry, and speedy restoring the woollen manufactory, by him formerly published..

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

english books, early english, books online, shall bee, quarter sessions, page images, creation partnership, text creation, euery parish, per annum, towne corporate, shut vp, persons infected, office shall, head officers, lord mayor, early works, shall haue, image sets, characters represented, prouided alwayes, honourable house, shall refuse, tcp schema, represented either, images scanned, markup reviewed, bit group, tcp assigned, providing financial, image set, proquest page, poor people, encoded text, tiff page, financial support, work described, commercial purposes, pfs batch, xml conversion, batch review, public welfare, easter next, creative commons, iv tiff, online text, without asking, institutions providing, asking permission, text transcribed

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Act against land lords setting of houses to un-free persons ; and also, An act for the purging the city of vagabonds and beggers A discourse touching provision for the poor written by Sir Matthew Hale ..., and England''s weal & prosperity proposed: or, Reasons for erecting publick vvork-houses in every county, for the speedy promoting of industry and the woollen manufactory, shewing how the wealth of the nation may be encreased, many hundred thousand pounds per annum. And also that many thousand persons may be so reformed, to their own and the whole kingdoms present and future wealth and glory, that there may no more be a begger bred up in the nation. Humbly offered to the consideration of the great wisdom of the nation, and presented to the honourable House of Commons. By R. Haines. To which is added A model of government for such works houses prepared by the same author, and printed in the year (79) intended to have been presented to the last Parliament. Pursuant to a breviate of proposals for the promoting of industry, and speedy restoring the woollen manufactory, by him formerly published..

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:

tcp, poor, england, oxford, majesties, london, kingdom, citie, wooll, wealth, trade, stock, rogues, realme, poore, plague, persons, peace, parish, ouerseers, office, nation, maiesties, iustices, information, houses, fathers, expedients, county, countie, common, city, addresse, acte, accommodation

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 shall, and By the Lords and others His Majesties commissioners an order for the observance and execution of the statute made for the reliefe and ordering of persons infected with the plague. 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?":

persons, time, work, text, euery, houses, place, person, places, house, men, reliefe, people, sayd, things, part, shal, others, money, execution, way, poore, books, order, charge, texts, reason, works, day, peace, images, end, case, xml, thing, power, orders, themselues, man, care, punishment, officers, characters, wealth, image, page, vpon, quarter, number, want

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, are, said, have, made, were, was, take, do, make, being, been, bee, put, set, infected, according, appointed, taken, had, give, enacted, come, encoded, found, work, pay, know, imployed, aforesaid, kept, thought, let, given, visited, concerning, bring, keep, published, done, sent, think, employed, did, receive, based, prouided, ordered, continue

Proper Nouns

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

poor, iustices, peace, parish, bee, tcp, england, london, office, acte, citie, city, kingdom, doe, countie, persons, c., act, house, parishes, text, english, god, trade, oxford, county, stock, statute, law, _, houses, parliament, plague, hath, 〉, addresse, tei, lord, eebo, realme, poore, court, towne, publick, maiesties, justices, haue, ouerseers, imployment, euery

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, it, they, them, his, our, i, we, he, him, themselves, you, her, your, us, my, its, she, me, himself, one, ours, theirs, itself, vp, vnto, mine, lye, hitherto, bloodie

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?"

such, other, same, good, poor, great, many, more, able, present, common, early, first, own, english, true, fit, due, whole, next, little, least, infected, corporate, greater, lawfull, necessary, most, general, honourable, sayd, much, available, charitable, reasonable, idle, better, particular, like, honest, new, large, public, constable, textual, further, sufficient, private, last, high

not, so, then, also, thereof, as, well, very, now, more, therefore, most, out, otherwise, there, up, in, much, together, therein, only, yet, further, here, online, never, once, even, abroad, first, thereby, shal, ever, duely, thus, humbly, hereafter, rather, especially, next, before, wilfully, too, onely, likewise, far, enough, early, indeed, neere

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.