Helen Davidge, a data scientist, crunches the numbers of Heyer’s word choice and her readers to provide us with some unexpected insights into how her books were written and continue to be read. (11)
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this chapter demonstrates two kinds of data analysis that can be performed on books: text analysis and audience analysis.
Section 2 of this chapter presents text analysis on Heyer’s eighteenth-century and Regency novels, focusing on gender and school-grade reading level. The chapter then moves on in section 3 to discuss the findings of the Heyer readers’ survey, looking at their favourite novels, heroines and heroes, followed by an investigation of the attributes of a typical Heyer reader before exploring their reading habits. This chapter concludes with suggestions for possible further work and the conclusions of this initial research. (251)
From the introduction to the volume:
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