Visualizing Caribbean Literary Encounters: Progress Report 3

Report / January 04, 2022 / 2 Comments

During this week I continued my quest of searching for pieces of literature in the editions of Planters’ Punch during the time period of my focus; 1921-1940. I discovered that while making earlier entries I misspelt Planters’ Punch as “Planter’s Punch”. Upon this discovery, I had to edit every entry that I made to correct this error. I also realized that some of the volumes and issues seem to be missing which is something that I will have to look into at a later date.

In all my research I have only found one page in the Planters’ Punch that had poems and that was in a magazine published in 1922-23. On this page, there were 8 poems written by Ms May Farquharson and Ms Elieen Bliss. They both wrote 4 poems each. Mr Herbert George De Lisser’s work continued to make appearances in almost every publication I worked with.

While working I made some discoveries being that the number of pages containing a story decreased when the book was approaching its end. Also, the number of advertisements between the pages with the stories increased and became more frequent. Furthermore, the very last chunk leading up to the end of the story would have the largest number of grouped story pages. Another indication that a story was ending was the introduction of a new story which would make appearances more and more often when the other story’s end approaches near. I also realized that in the magazines there would typically be one or two long stories and about three or more short stories littered throughout the magazine.

This week I was still making entries from dLOC and I felt a lot more comfortable doing so. I also moved quicker as I found my pace and felt a lot less overwhelmed as I saw the number of opened tabs decrease. I felt super accomplished when I closed the last tab knowing that I had finally finished sorting through that massive pile of history. Now my journey to patch up any missing areas begins.