Excavating Victorian Cuba in the British Periodicals Database

Abstract

Britain played a multidimensional role in Cuba’s history during the Victorian period. This essay establishes an empirical warrant for the study of a distinctly Victorian Cuba by applying the tools of data mining and concordance analysis to ProQuest’s British Periodicals, Collections I & II . By identifying specific words and broader concepts that can guide future distant and close readings on this subject, it offers a highly transferrable case study on the use of digitized periodical collections to reconstruct a wide range of imaginative topoi for Victorian readers.