Dialect in British Fiction: 1800-1836Funded by The Arts and Humanities Research CouncilSupported by The University of Sheffield
Searching the Texts

The Dialect in British Fiction 1800 - 1836 website facilitates searching in two different ways:-

  1.  Searching the metadata associated with novels and characters.
  2.  Searching the actual text of the novel extracts.

In addition, a quick keyword search box is available at the top of every page.  This does a keyword search on both novels and characters, and also on extracts.  This quick search facility is equivalent to doing a keyword search on the "Search for Novels and Characters page" and checking the "All box".


A maximum of ten search results are displayed as a result of performing a search.  Further search results can be paged through.  On the results page, the search form is hidden by default in order to display the results more clearly.  The "Show / Hide Search Form" link can be clicked to display the form.  The search can be refined as desired using this search form.  If a search finds no or few results, the search form can be used to simplify the search in order to widen the results.

 

All searches are case insensitive.  % can be used as a wildcard to specify zero or more characters (for example, Bar% as an author name returns Barham) or _ can be used to specify a single wildcard character (Bar_am returns Barham, as an author surname).  The search will only return results that match all of the search parameters (searching for B% as author surname and female as author gender returns only female authors whose surnames begin with B, not female authors AND authors whose names begin with B).  Because all of the search parameters are combined, removing one or more search parameters may return more results.

 

The 'Clear' button clears all search fields / returns the search fields to their default values.  The 'Browse All' button displays all records in the database (it is equivalent to searching with no parameters).

Search for Novels and Characters

The 'Search for Novels and Characters' search form enables you to search the metadata associated with each novel, including details of the novel's characters.  Several of the search boxes associated with characters are multiselect - more than one selection may be made by clicking on each selection whilst pressing the CTRL key.  When searching a character's "Place of Origin", the character's town or rural area, county, region and country are searched, where known.  Searching for "Unspecified" using the multiselect options returns those characters who have no nation / county specified, or those whose county / nation is "Unspecified".

Search for Speech Extracts

The 'Search for Extracts' search form enables you to search the text of the tagged extracts, and also the features tagged in the extracts.  Several of the search boxes associated with characters are multiselect - more than one selection may be made by clicking on each selection whilst pressing the CTRL key. When searching a character's "Place of Origin", the character's town or rural area, county, region and country are searched, where known.  Searching for "Unspecified" using the multiselect options returns those characters who have no nation / county specified, or those whose county / nation is "Unspecified".

Version 1.1 (December 2015)Background image reproduced from the Database of Mid Victorian Illustration (DMVI)