Transforming Middlemarch: A Genetic Edition of Andrew Davies' 1994 BBC Adaptation of George Eliot's novel.

This proposal brings together a range of disciplines, in archive theory, adaptation studies and digital humanities, to develop a methodology to produce the first multi-media scholarly edition of a screen adaptation, using Andrew Davies's (1994) 6-part television serialisation of George Eliot's Middlemarch during the 150th anniversary of its 8-part serialised publication in 1871-2. It will draw substantially on materials from the DMU seed-funded digitisation of the Andrew Davies Papers which were donated to DMU's Special Collections by the writer in 2015 and were the subject of a 2018 BBC documentary Andrew Davies: Rewriting the Classics, which included contributions from Special Collections Archivist Katharine Short and material items.

The project will employ for 15 months a post-doctoral Research Fellow (RF), Dr Lucy Hobbs, under the supervision of PI Professor Justin Smith, Co-I Professor Gabriel Egan, Co-I Dr Anna Blackwell and Assistant Archivist Dr Natalie Hayton, to design a multi-layered hypertext of Davies's Middlemarch including production notes, screenplay drafts and correspondences with actors, producers and directors, and additional print, moving image and audio resources from the BBC, Open University, the BFI and the British Library. The resulting digital 'genetic edition', will enable users to follow Davies's approach to adaptation: his responses to the original sources, his extensive process of script revision, and his creative discussions and collaborative re-editing before and during rehearsals. This digital edition will combine original interviews with Davies and his collaborators, extracts from Middlemarch read by an actor, clips from the final filmed production and other multi-media sources with archival evidence of what lies beneath its construction. It will offer the user new ways to explore the process of adaptation. The resource will be launched on an open access website co-hosted at DMU and at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's George Eliot online archive where it will be beta-tested by the project's special advisor, Dr Beverley Rilett (an Eliot digital humanities expert).

This resource has real pedagogical potential for teachers of literature and adaptation from A-level to post-graduate. Educational and academic publishers have already shown significant interest and will be invited to the BL Study Day, alongside representatives from the George Eliot Fellowship keen to explore museum/heritage applications of the resource. The impact of this applied technology has the potential to transform the user's experience of any literary adaptation.

Feedback will be collected from users of the edition at the events planned. The British Library will host a George Eliot Study Day (to be opened by Andrew Davies) celebrating the 150th anniversary of Middlemarch featuring the new resource at the centre of a presentation of the BL's George Eliot manuscripts and Davies' George Eliot papers. A virtual exhibition featuring the genetic edition and materials from the Davies archive, and an international webinar (involving academics and students) will be co-hosted by DMU and Nebraska-Lincoln, and will share and debate user responses to the resource. RF Hobbs will maintain a smartphone video diary of the project as a report on the process and commentary on any creative, technical, data-protection or legal challenges encountered. Drs Hayton and Hobbs will co-author a transdisciplinary scholarly article on the benefits and challenges of constructing a multimedia genetic edition informed by archival appraisal and selection theory, copyright law and data protection protocols, aimed at The Library journal. The project's work will be showcased in a special issue of the journal Adaptation (OUP) devoted to Davies's work, co-edited by Hobbs and Co-I Blackwell, and commissioned by Prof. Deborah Cartmell, Director of DMU's Centre for Adaptations and founder of the Association of Adaptation Studies (patron Andrew Davies).