Computers are everywhere because they meet business and government needs. Someday they probably can meet such humanities research needs as refereeing different ways of interpreting literature. In the meantime scholars need to become better at computers and statistics so they can direct computers to answer the questions in the humanities that researchers want asked.

At this point computers help scholars with on-line concordances, elementary patterns, and word counts. But THE DIGITAL WORD: TEXT-BASED COMPUTING IN THE HUMANITIES also shows what computers can do with interpreting Offred's character in Margaret Atwood's HANDMAID'S TALE, critical editions of Geoffrey Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES and William Langland's PIERS PLOWMAN, Samuel Coleridge's THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, James Joyce's ULYSSES, THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, and the planned 350,000 alphanumeric or bitmap digitized Bibliotheque de France national heritage library project with 300 reading stations for corporate suppliers, professional readers and researchers to access, store and work with animated and still images, sounds, and texts. So I hope editors George P. Landow and Paul Delany regularly publish more updates to this riveting followup to the earlier HYPERMEDIA AND LITERARY STUDIES.

Although somewhat dated, Landow and Delany's collection of essays brings together early work (1980s) by scholars interested in thinking about the implications of hypertext within the humanities. Terence Harpold's "Threnody: Psychoanalytic Digressions on the Subject of Hypertext" is widely referenced. While arguably over-invested in poststructuralist literary theory at the expense of visual cultural studies, this volume cannot be ignore by serious students of hypermedia. Landow and Delany's opening essay is particularly valuable for its summarizing of what was then current thought on hypertext as an expressive form.

Sad to say, most people, even those who are fans of Victorian-era literature, have probably never heard of George Gissing. Those who do know him think perhaps he was a 'one hit wonder' with New Grub Street. While New Grub Street is a brilliant read, his little known In the Year of the Jubilee (IYJ) is also a gem.

On the surface, IYJ is a story common to Victorian-era novels. People are obsessed with the thought of inheriting money, making sure they are viewed as 'refined' rather than 'working class', and the notion of 'family values' is taken to an extreme. However in IYJ we finally see the emergence of the middle class, people who are in white collar jobs and who see the value in working (rather than living off of someone else's fortune). And most shocking for a Victorian novel, the most forceful character is a young woman who actually seeks out work to keep her life interesting (and not depend on her estranged husband).

IYJ is well-written, thought-provoking without being preachy, and should be held in esteem on par with the works from James, Eliot, Wharton and, indeed, other works from George Gissing.