The concept of sensibility arose in the literature of the eighteenth century, and this blend of moral and aesthetic feeling was typified in novels such as The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Vicar of Wakefield and in the poetry of William Cowper. The sentimental novel in particular could be either serious or ironic, and it was this multi‐valency of meaning that led to the creation of The Dictionary of Sensibility, a hypertext dictionary with 24 key terms and references to many primary texts of the genre. According to the introduction, “Sensibility and its related terms either appeared for the first time, took on meanings unique to the period, or gained enriched connotations” during the eighteenth century. This project grew out of a course on “The novel of sensibility” by six graduate students at the University of Virginia, and is written for students of eighteenth‐century literature. The information on the authors could be more descriptive: the site is hosted on a university English department server, so it is fairly easy to surmise that their affiliation is academic. However, a brief biographical statement about each of the authors and their affiliations would have been helpful.
The Dictionary of Sensibility provides readers the opportunity to understand the many layers of meaning inherent in the language of sensibility and its usage in literary texts. Students at the undergraduate and graduate level will find it a useful research tool. The Dictionary consists of a general introduction and a Term List (which links to texts relevant to the term under discussion) as well as providing a Source bibliography and a Critical bibliography. The Term list consists of 24 hyper‐linked terms that take the reader to a brief introductory discussion, critical questions about the term and its place in the vocabulary of sensibility, and a list of linked quotes from primary texts, as well as a list of related terms. The most useful part of the Dictionary is the page with the quoted passage from a primary text and a discussion of the term in question appears in the text. For example, the entry for Sublime provides some commentary and asks, “How is [the sublime] conceived in relation to a greater power?” The quotations speaking to this critical question about the nature of the sublime come from Ann Radcliffe's The Italian and An Address to Poetry by Helen Maria Williams. The 54 item Source Bibliography lists some of the major texts of the period; these texts are the focus of the Dictionary of Sensibility.
The site is fairly straightforward to navigate, but this would be improved by a search function and an index. A search function on the site would be a useful tool when researching the occurrences of a particular term. The hypertext structure of the site means that a user will spend a lot of time clicking through various interrelated terms. However, this reflects the non‐linear nature of hypertext rather than intentionally bad web site design. An index would be beneficial because it would lay out the cross‐referenced relationships on one page, rather than requiring the user to click on each term to see if it has been cross referenced with another.
I would recommend The Dictionary of Sensibility as it does a good job of discussing a very particular vocabulary and linking it with relevant citations and strong bibliographies for the literature of the time. Those conducting more in‐depth research would benefit from using this site as a starting point, and as such The Dictionary of Sensibility does an excellent job of laying out the vocabulary of sensibility and key literary and critical works. The Dictionary of Sensibility has been linked to/from a number of other academic sites, including Jack Lynch's Eighteenth‐Century Resources (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/ ∼ jlynch/18th/) and the MIT Libraries. This is a suitable source for undergraduate and graduate students conducting research in this time period. It could be recommended more strongly if it had better author background information and either a search function or an index to make research more efficient.
