The dataset I collected was letters written in France during the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Year War was from 1618 to 1648. My data set sits nicely in those parameters at 1622 to 1642. We could utilize this dataset to draw connections between specific events of the Thirty Year War and French writers at this time.

The visualization reveals various characteristics of how women were writing in the early modern Republic of Letters. From the visualization, I can see that most of the time, multiple women would write to a single man. There is one exception to this though, Hugo Groot, who wrote a few tensome letters to various female writers. Nevertheless, many women communicated with a common recipient, meaning that there was a significance to communicating with them. By women writing letters to these common recipients, women were able to receive and better spread the communication and information that the republic of letters brought.

By utilizing a visualization, we can see how often and where information is guided to much easily. It’s almost like looking at a map and drawing arrows for letters from person to person. We can also better visualize how connections were made from person to person, as we can literally see the path information that certain ideas may have taken.