Distant Reader - subject-thieves-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 2021-05-25 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 14 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 405,251 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 28,946 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 93. 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:

one, much, time, man, will, made, now, well, great, two, good, house, self, came, shall, might, yet, money, may, master, us, first, make, day, though, many, like, went, without, little, men, hee, put, take, told, come, give, long, thing, never, place, three, found, way, another, every, life, see, done, thought

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The English rogue described, in the life of Meriton Latroon, a witty extravagant Being a compleat discovery of the most eminent cheats of both sexes. Licensed, January 5. 1666., The English rogue continued in the life of Meriton Latroon, and other extravangants comprehending the most eminent cheats of most trades professions. The second part. Licensed Feb. 22. 1669, and Histoire des larrons, or The history of theeves. Written in French, and translated out of the originall, by Paul Godwin.

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

every one, next day, young man, short time, early english, english books, hundred pound, books online, one day, well enough, one another, next morning, every thing, long time, let us, page images, old man, mean time, early works, will make, ready money, thousand pound, lord chief, fifty pound, must needs, much troubled, two gentlemen, make use, long since, creation partnership, one time, meane time, hundred pounds, lord holles, text creation, solomon grace, every day, sir george, la forge, great deal, five hundred, many times, great many, two hundred, will tell, ten pound, well pleased, shall give, came thither, one night

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are [A warning for all wicked livers] By the example of Richard Whitfield, and M. Gibs who were two notorious offenders, and both of one company, which two men made a daily practise, and got their livings by robbing and stealing both on the high-ways, and in any other places where they came, but were at last taken, apprehended and condemned to dye for robbing of a coach, & murdering of a captains man at Shooters-Hil, in Kent, some five or six miles from London, and for that offence and others, Gibs was prest to death at Maidstone in Kent, and Whitfield was hanged in chains on Shooters-Hil, where he did the bloody deed, the 27th. of March, 1655. The manner how shall be exactly related in this ditty. The tune is, Ned Smith. To His Highness the Lord Protector, and the Parliament of England, &c., and The vvitty rogue arraigned, condemned, & executed. Or, The history of that incomparable thief Richard Hainam. Relating the several robberies, mad pranks, and handsome jests by him performed, as it was taken from his own mouth, not long before his death. Likewise the manner of robbing the King of Denmark, the King of France, the Duke of Normandy, the merchant at Rotterdam, cum multis aliis. Also, with his confession, concerning his robbing of the King of Scots. Together with his speech at the place of execution. / Published by E.S. for information & satisfaction of the people..

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:

master, chap, god, tcp, lord, law, justice, great, good, gentleman, woman, wife, val, ship, robbery, pearles, parliament, mother, money, mistress, merchant, man, iustice, house, hell, hee, governour, father, england, country, clown, city, chief, chamber, captaine, butchers, art, world, whitfield, uncle, trade, town, time, table, sun, sir, shop, self, sea, scrivener

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 time, and The speech and confession of Mr. Richard Hannam on Tuesday last in the rounds of Smithfield, being the 17. of this instant June immediately before his great and fatall leap from off the ladder together with a true and perfect description of his life and death; his several rambles, figaries, exploits, and designs, performed in most parts of Europe; especially upon the king of Scots, the queen of Sweden, the kings of France, Spain, and Denmark, the high and mighty States of Holland, the great Turk, and the pope of Rome. This is licensed and entred, according to speciall order and command. 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?":

time, man, self, money, house, day, men, thing, place, way, life, night, others, nothing, hee, part, end, hand, manner, things, words, people, one, hands, friend, pound, world, love, death, bed, company, rest, purpose, account, business, matter, body, reason, ▪, text, woman, occasion, head, eyes, friends, discourse, name, none, length, morning

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:

was, had, be, is, have, being, were, are, said, having, made, did, came, make, been, do, went, put, told, take, give, come, found, see, done, thought, know, go, say, knew, let, gave, took, seeing, left, brought, taken, began, sent, called, saw, resolved, tell, desired, lay, given, heard, according, am, taking

Proper Nouns

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

master, 〉, ●, god, ◊, 〈, london, chap, sir, gentleman, hath, justice, thou, house, law, hee, mr., lord, father, english, england, chamber, tcp, hainam, robbery, du, val, hell, butchers, masters, country, chief, c., court, mistress, theeves, doe, wife, king, mother, mans, sea, scrivener, paris, devil, bellingham, heaven, trade, november, company

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?"

i, he, my, his, him, it, me, they, them, her, their, you, we, she, our, us, your, himself, themselves, its, thee, thy, mine, one, theirs, hers, yours, ours, whereof, yarde, windowes, ourselves, haply, gods, 〈, ye, us''d, smoakt, on''t, ng, myself, mself, judg''d, herself, hee, em, dy''d, bereft, beg''d, ay

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, great, good, such, much, many, more, little, own, same, first, young, next, several, old, last, best, small, full, long, most, true, short, whole, ready, better, least, new, present, poor, able, rich, second, high, greatest, dead, like, common, general, very, free, particular, greater, sure, worth, few, private, former, fit, guilty

not, so, then, now, very, well, out, up, as, more, much, there, never, thus, only, therefore, most, again, too, off, away, first, yet, soon, in, long, together, also, ever, here, down, enough, before, still, no, presently, on, thereof, sometimes, often, about, indeed, onely, over, even, all, forth, far, likewise, rather

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.