Pre-web Digital Publishing and the Lore of Electronic Literature

This Element examines a watershed moment in the recent history of digital publishing through a case study of the pre-web, serious hypertext periodical, the Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext (1994-1995).

Early hypertext writing relied on standalone, mainframe computers and specialized authoring software.

With the Web launching as a mass distribution platform, EQRH faced a fast-evolving technological landscape, paired with an emergent gift and open access economy.

Its non-linear writing experiments afford key insights into historical, medium-specific authoring practices.

Access constraints have left EQRH under-researched and threatened by obsolescence.

To address this challenge, this study offers platform-specific analyses of all the EQRH's cross-media materials, including works that have hitherto escaped scholarly attention.

It deploys a form of conceptually oral ethno-historiography: the lore of electronic literature.

The Element deepens our understanding of the North American publishing industry's history and contributes to the overdue preservation of early digital writing.