Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters

Exploring the hard copy index in the Selden End of Duke Humfreys Library in the Bodleian

We are delighted to announce that Dr Kim McLean-Fiander will be joining the Project as an Editorial Assistant. Kim will be working intensively with the digitized version of the Card Catalogue of MS Correspondence in the Bodleian Library (which will form an initial core of material for our union catalogue of seventeenth-century letters), proofing the keyed texts and bringing them into conformity with Project standards. Her academic research touches upon the intellectual networks of seventeenth-century women, while she has wide-ranging experience of cataloguing and editing at the Bodleian Libraries and at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. For a full profile see here.

Detail from 'Death on the Battlefield', by Stefano della Bella (c.1648). Image courtesy of Leigh Penman.

Dr Leigh Penman, our Samual Hartlib Postdoctoral Fellow, has published an article entitled ‘The Unanticipated Millennium: Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy and Chiliastic Error in Paul Egard’s Posaune der goettlichen Gnade und Liechts (1623)’ in Pietismus und Neuzeit 35 (2009), 11–45. The article situates Egard and his unusual devotional work within several contexts (biographical, literary, and church historical), and problematizes contemporary distinctions between heterodoxy and orthodoxy. Although Egard was a well-regarded Lutheran pastor, the content of Posaune was decisively influenced by his familiarity with heterodox literature of the period, as well as his personal acquaintance with figures such as Joachim Morsius, Hans Engelbrecht, Nicolaus Teting, and others. Egard’s case demonstrates the power some heterodox ideas (specifically millenarian ones) possessed during this period, as well as the influence of networks of heterodox thinkers.

Testing the record-editing interface.

Comparing calendars.

Yesterday provided us with a valuable opportunity to bring individual CofK researchers together with OULS technical experts for a day of intensive training and consultation on various aspects of our nascent union catalogue of seventeenth-century intellectual correspondence. Scholars working on the Aubrey, Lister, Lhwyd, Hartlib, and Comenius collections explored the latest iteration of the pilot database; tested its online interface for the editing of letter records as well as our free-standing application for the collection of epistolary data; and compared individual calendars against each other as well as Project standards. The first version of the catalogue will be launched at the Universal Reformation conference, which will take place in Oxford on 21-23 September 2010.

We are currently seeking an Editorial Assistant (1.0FTE) to help us with the online publication of the Bodleian Library’s card catalogue of seventeenth-century manuscript correspondence. To be based in the History Faculty, the assistant, who will be employed for six months in the first instance, will be responsible for providing basic quality assurance on metadata from the cards which has been keyed and supplied by an outsourcing company. Working with online tools for the display and editing of data developed specifically for the Project, they will ensure that all records have been tagged in compliance with Project standards; that within each individual field dates, names, and places have been expressed correctly and without typographical errors; and implement necessary changes directly onto the records by means of a simple data entry interface. The closing date for applications is noon on Friday 5 February 2010; for full details and how to apply, please see here.

Dr Anna Marie Roos, our industrious Martin Lister Research Fellow, has contributed her expertise to Chemistry: A Volatile History, a three-part series of hour-long documentaries to be broadcast on BBC Four from the end of this week. As well as describing Lister’s various contributions to the discipline, Anna Marie provides insights into Boyle and The Skeptical Chymist, and Newton and alchemy, and assisted producers in their preparation for the programme (including confirming that Boyle did not in fact invent the phosphorous match). The first episode will be broadcast on Thursday 21 January at 9pm.

Dr Anna Marie Roos, our Martin Lister Research Fellow, has just published an article on the seventeenth-century physician in Notes & Records of the Royal Society entitled ‘A Speculum of Chymical Practice: Isaac Newton, Martin Lister (1639–1712), and the Making of Telescopic Mirrors’. According to the abstract, ‘In 1674 … Martin Lister published a new method of making glass of antimony for telescopic mirrors, using Derbyshire cawk or barite as a flux. New manuscript evidence reveals that Sir Isaac Newton requested samples of the cawk and antimony from Lister through an intermediary named Nathaniel Johnston. An analysis of Lister’s paper and Johnston’s correspondence and its context reveals insights not only about Newton’s work with telescopic specula but also about his alchemical investigations. Analysing these sources also contributes to our understanding of the nature of correspondence networks in the early scientific revolution in England’. Subscribed users can access the full text of the article here.