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

In 1663, Martin Lister left his parents’ house in Burwell, Lincolnshire to study medicine in Montpellier. Whilst in France, he kept a journal in an almanac entitled Every Man’s Companion: Or, An useful Pocket-Book (MS Lister 19, Bodleian Library).

Month by month, Lister noted the medical texts he consulted (and the French romances and comedies he read) in this thin octavo, and annotated the recipes given to him when he lodged with an apothecary. He described the personalities and works of luminaries he met in France including William Croone, Nicolas Steno, and John Ray. Lister performed a series of dissections with Steno, as well as going on natural history expeditions with Ray. Lister also attended the salon of Sir Thomas Crew to discuss ornithology, medicine, and literature, mixing with other fellows of Cambridge and English expatriates. As his time in Montpellier was part of his education as a gentleman, Lister made detailed notes about his visits to gardens and libraries in Paris, manufacturing methods, viniculture, literature and drama, and rules of politesse and art connoisseurship.

Dr Anna Marie Roos, our Lister Research Fellow, has recently been awarded a British Academy Small Research Grant to create a textual edition of the pocketbook with appropriate apparatus. To annotate the edition, she will also utilize 25 pages of memoirs of Lister’s time in Montpellier and 43 pieces of Lister’s French correspondence in the Bodleian Library and in France. As the account of Lister’s journey is so detailed, his grand tour and memoirs will also be recreated as an interactive website using maps, images, and texts, providing a virtual introduction to an early modern medical education.