# The Censor (essay periodical), Vols. I-III, second (collected) edition

**Slug:** `censor_1717`  
**Priority:** 2  
**Author:** Lewis Theobald  
**Edition / date:** London: printed for Jonas Browne, 1717 (collected edition of the 96 numbers, 11 Apr.-17 Jun. 1715 and 1 Jan.-1 Jun. 1717). This IS the 1717 collected edition asked for (title pages read 'The Censor. Vol. I/II/III ... 1717').

## Sources
- **archive.org** `sim_censor_the-censor_april-11-june-17-1715_1_1-30` - https://archive.org/details/sim_censor_the-censor_april-11-june-17-1715_1_1-30
  - catalogue title: The Censor  April 11-June 17, 1715: Vol 1 Iss 1-30
  - date field: April 11-June 17, 1715; images/frames: 229; OCR engine: tesseract 5.3.0-6-g76ae
  - digitised from / contributor: ['IA40607326-21', 'microfilm']; publisher: Open Court Publishing Co
  - raw file(s) saved here (exactly as downloaded): `sim_censor_the-censor_april-11-june-17-1715_1_1-30_djvu.txt`
  - note: Vol. I (nos. 1-30); microfilm reel IA40607326-21; tesseract OCR
- **archive.org** `sim_censor_the-censor_january-01-march-16-1717_2_31-63` - https://archive.org/details/sim_censor_the-censor_january-01-march-16-1717_2_31-63
  - catalogue title: The Censor  January 01-March 16,  1717: Vol 2 Iss 31-63
  - date field: January 01-March 16,  1717; images/frames: 247; OCR engine: tesseract 5.3.0-6-g76ae
  - digitised from / contributor: ['IA40607326-21', 'microfilm']; publisher: Open Court Publishing Co
  - raw file(s) saved here (exactly as downloaded): `sim_censor_the-censor_january-01-march-16-1717_2_31-63_djvu.txt`
  - note: Vol. II (nos. 31-63)
- **archive.org** `sim_censor_the-censor_march-19-june-01-1717_3_64-96` - https://archive.org/details/sim_censor_the-censor_march-19-june-01-1717_3_64-96
  - catalogue title: The Censor  March 19-June 01, 1717: Vol 3 Iss 64-96
  - date field: March 19-June 01, 1717; images/frames: 247; OCR engine: tesseract 5.3.0-6-g76ae
  - digitised from / contributor: ['IA40607326-21', 'microfilm']; publisher: Open Court Publishing Co
  - raw file(s) saved here (exactly as downloaded): `sim_censor_the-censor_march-19-june-01-1717_3_64-96_djvu.txt`
  - note: Vol. III (nos. 64-96)

## Cleaned text(s)
- `censor_vol1_nos1-30.clean.txt` - 40,280 words; 95% of text lines pass a dictionary check
- `censor_vol2_nos31-63.clean.txt` - 44,031 words; 95% of text lines pass a dictionary check
- `censor_vol3_nos64-96.clean.txt` - 46,203 words; 93% of text lines pass a dictionary check

## Completeness
All three volumes complete (c. 130,000 words).

## OCR quality / notes
Cleaning: IA djvu.txt was normalised (ſ->s), microfilm target frames and junk lines trimmed, page numbers/signatures/running heads dropped, end-of-line hyphenation joined, and a CONSERVATIVE long-s correction applied (words with 'f' that are not in a modern frequency list are replaced by their 's' variant when that variant is common; a short override list covers so/she/sir/see/such/some...). Ambiguous real words (fame/same, fell/sell, fold/sold, found/sound, foul/soul, fit/sit ...) were left unchanged. Statistics of every change are in the `*.cleanstats.json` beside each cleaned file. Expect residual OCR noise; the '% of lines pass a dictionary check' figure above is a rough legibility score (modern-English word list; 18th-c. spellings count against it).
This OCR rendered long-s as 'f' rather than 'ſ', so several thousand automatic f->s corrections were applied; residual 'f' forms remain in ambiguous words.