Founder and former Director of the School of Cultural Texts and Records (SCTR), Jadavpur University, Professor Emeritus Sukanta Chaudhuri’s pioneering efforts in humanities computing in India lies at the root of this project. He trained a group of fresh-faced Jadavpur University postgraduates in the mysteries of electronic textual editing in 2003, gave them employment and invaluable experience in the preparation of his brainchild, the Bichitra Online Tagore Variorum, in 2011–2013, and encouraged them to undertake projects of their own thereafter. The present editor counts herself fortunate to have been one of them.
This project has been funded by an European Commission Erasmus Mundus Action 2 EMINTE post-doctoral fellowship of nine months from India to the Netherlands. The SCTR, headed by Professor Amlan Das Gupta, granted research leave for that period (September 2014–May 2015). The researcher’s personal copy of Elaine Beilin’s scholarly edition of the texts was OCRed with the help of the School’s equipment and by its research fellows, especially Kawshik Ananda Kirtania and Amritesh Biswas. Purbasha Auddy and Shantanu Majee, also of the SCTR, provided much appreciated help and support.
Dr Kristine Johanson of the Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen Capaciteitsgroep Engelse taal en cultuur (Faculty of Humanities Department of English Language and Culture), University of Amsterdam, was the principal adviser of the project during this period. This website was hosted on the University of Amsterdam’s server by Myrthe Bil and she has been the principal technical adviser as well. The University of Amsterdam’s library subscription to online databases has been invaluable and use of all of the University library’s facilities, both physical and digital, is noted with gratitude.