Alice Thornton’s Books: Search for People and Places

Blog article published by Suzanne Trill on 4 December 2023  TEIdigital edition

We now have a search function for people and places which means you can now see who appears, and how often, across all four books and find out what places Thornton was associated with over the course of her life.

It is organised so that you can search by name, book, type (i.e., person or place) and, for places, by region.

People

For example, if you enter the name ‘Wandesford’ in the ‘Text search’, it will lead to list shown in the main image for this blog. However, if you then click on either the ‘Expand/Collapse’ button or the link to ‘Lady Alice Wandesford (1593–1659)’, further information will appear.

This entry provides a sample of the kind of information that will eventually be made available for all the people in our list: that is, a brief biography and a list of all the pages on which this person is mentioned across all four of Thornton’s Books.

Currently, the biographical information is only complete for those people mentioned in in the first twenty-two pages of the Book of Remembrances: that is Mr Baxter, Mrs Best, Katherine Dudley Leveson, Roger Lasselles, Sarah Tomlinson, William Thornton, Alice Osborne Wandesford, Anne Wandesford Norton, Alice Wandesford Thornton, Christopher Wandesford (1592–1640), Christopher Wandesford (1628–1687), Lady Anne Wentworth, Lady Arabella Wentworth, Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford.

The links to references to them are only live for the pages included in our partial release (i.e., up to page 103; so, for example, clicking on ‘Book Rem: p. 23’ in the list above will take you to that page).

In due course, all the links will become live, and you will be able to explore all references Thornton makes to a particular individual within her writing.

Places

This version of our search function lists all the places with which Thornton is associated and where she mentions them in each of her Books (within the same parameters as those outlined above).

Below, you can see a sample of the results if you limit your search area to the region of Yorkshire.

Books

Also, if you look at the Books page, we have updated the information provided about the material history of the four books, via an ‘About’ button.

As an example of the kind of information we intend to provide for all four books, you will find most detail provided for the Book of Remembrances (description, provenance, dating).

So, this version is only a taster of what is to come, and we would welcome your feedback on what is here as we create the rest of the materials.

Please let us know what you think of this facility by clicking the feedback button on the bottom right-hand side of the page.