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

Welcome to this 'genetic edition' of Andrew Davies' 1994 BBC adaptation of George Eliot's Middlemarch. This multimedia resource, believed to be the first of its kind, uses XML textual encoding - following the principles of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) - to enable comparative analyses charting the journey of a literary adaptation from source novel to script and screen.

Users can navigate from the Shooting Script backwards (to the novel) and forwards (to the Post-production Script), following diamond icons leading to Notes, intertextual references, a range of assets and additional extended Commentaries on key scenes and adaptive moments. In this way, the genetic edition demonstrates both the creative skills of the screen adaptor and script editor, and (via additional production history research) the collaborative nature of classic serial television adaptation. (The panel Navigating this edition at the top of the screen summarises the navigational icons.)

The 'genetic edition' has been created by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at De Montfort University, UK, in partnership with the British Library and in consultation with the George Eliot Archive. The project (2022-3) was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.