Martin Lister

Digital Calendar and Scholarly Edition

People involved: Anna Marie Roos

 

Martin Lister (1639–1712) was a prominent Fellow of the Royal Society who was made an honorary MD in 1684. A benefactor of the Ashmolean, he corresponded regularly on natural history with its keepers, Robert Plot and Edward Lhuyd. Furthermore, Lister was a prolific corresponding Fellow, and he issued a steady stream of letters from his medical practice in York, many of which were printed in the Philosophical Transactions.

Later in life he moved to London, where he acted as Vice-President of the Royal Society and also as Censor of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1697–78 he travelled abroad, and finally retired to Epsom, where he continued to transact voluminous correspondence. Lister was one of the most high-profile and well-connected naturalists of the age. His letters thus provide a unique window onto early enlightenment cultures of medicine and natural philosophy throughout Britain and continental Europe, and serve as an ideal complement to John Aubrey‘s correspondence within Cultures of Knowledge.

lister

Anna Marie presents on conchology.

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Launching the bio at the Royal Society.

listerorchid‘… Lister was one of the most prolific corresponding fellows of the Royal Society, and he issued a steady stream of letters from his medical practice in York …’

His unpublished papers were some of the largest of his donations to the Ashmolean and attest to his remarkably wide expertise, which ranged from Yorkshire antiquities and the origins of kidney stones to the disciplines of conchology (the study of shells) and arachnology (spiders), both of which he founded. In the nineteenth century, these collections passed from the Ashmolean to the Bodleian Library. They contain the bulk of his correspondence, although sizeable quantities of his outgoing letters are held elsewhere, chiefly in the archives of the Royal Society and the British Library‘s collection of Sloane Manuscripts. Those in the Bodleian illuminate, and are illuminated by, his many other scientific manuscripts, which include unpublished works, drafts, notes, and collections from other people’s papers, as well as diaries from his visit to Montpellier in the mid-1660s, where he teamed up with John Ray and other English naturalists, and met prominent continental figures such as the Danish geologist Nicolaus Steno.

Rationale for Inclusion

With the exception of those printed in the Philosophical Transactions and in the correspondences of friends such as John Ray, Lister’s letters are unedited and unpublished, which has led to the relative neglect of this important archive. There are around 1,000 letters to or from Lister known to be extant (roughly 630 of which are in Oxford), but it is anticipated more will be unearthed in a systematic survey of the collections in the Bodleian and Royal Society libraries, as well as in other repositories.

Outputs & Presentations

Primary Outputs

  • Volume I, The Correspondence of Martin Lister (1639-1712), ed. Anna Marie Roos. 3 vols (Brill: Leiden, 2014-2017).
  • Digital catalogue of the correspondence of Martin Lister within Early Modern Letters Online.

Launch Lister Catalogue

Recent Secondary Outputs

  • Anna Marie Roos (Organiser), History Comes to Life: Seventeenth-Century Natural History, Medicine, and the ‘New Science (The Royal Society, London, April 2012).
  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘The Art of Science: A Rediscovery of the Lister Copperplates’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society (December 2011).
  • web_of_nature_coverAnna Marie Roos, ‘Salient Theories in the Fossil Debate in the Early Royal Society: The Influence of Johann Van Helmont’, in Controversies within the Scientific Revolution, eds, Victor Boantza, Marcelo Dascal and Adelino Cattani (John Benjamins Publishing, 2011), pp. 151-70.
  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘The Art of Science: A Rediscovery of the Lister Copperplates’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society (December 2011).
  • Anna Marie Roos, Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639-1712), the First Arachnologist (Leiden, 2011).

Recent Presentations

  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘Martin Lister, Antimony Glass and Newton’s Telescope’. The Association for the History of Glass Study Day (Study Day, Science Museum, London, November 2011).
  • Book Launch, Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639-1712), the First Arachnologist (Royal Society, London, September 2011). 
  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘Every Man’s Companion: Or, A useful Pocket-Book: The Travel Journal of Dr. Martin Lister (1639-1712)’. Intellectual Geography: Comparative Studies, 1550-1700 (Conference, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford).
  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘The Art of Science: The Rediscovery of the Lister Copperplates’. The Skilful Naturalist: Experiment and Theorizing in Early Modern Science (Workshop, University of Leeds, July 2011).
  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘The Art of Science: The Rediscovery of the Lister Copperplates’. Annual Conference of the British Society for the History of Science (Conference, University of Exeter, July 2011).
  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘Natural Philosophy and the Republic of Letters: Sir Isaac Newton, Martin Lister, and the Making of Telescopic Mirrors’. Reading Conference in Early Modern Studies: Communication and Exchange (Conference, University of Reading, June 2011).
  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘The ‘Rediscovery’ of the Lister Copperplates’. History of the Book Group (Seminar Merton College, University of Oxford, May 2011).
  • Anna Marie Roos, ‘Spiderman: Dr Martin Lister (1639-1712) and Early Modern Theories of Insect Vectors and Disease’. EMPHASIS (Seminar, University College, London, May 2011).

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