Editors’ Introduction

Robert Hooke (1635-1703), the first Curator of Experiments of the Royal Society, Gresham Professor of Geometry, and Surveyor for the City of London, had a particularly diverse body of work, making his library not only interesting to book historians but to historians of science, mathematics, architecture, and art. This editors’ introduction to the Robert Hooke’s Books Database provides information on Hooke’s activities as a book collector, as well as assessments of the Bibliotheca Hookiana (London, 1703), the auction catalogue prepared after his death, and the annotations in the books extant from his library. Future additions and updates to the text, in line with the editors’ ongoing research, will be released with version numbers in the pdf editions.

It is highly recommended, both for ease of reading and for citation purposes, that readers download the pdf version of this text.

CONTENTS
This is a collaborative effort, but Part I was chiefly written by William Poole with contributions from Felicity Henderson; and Part II by Yelda Nasifoglu. (about the editors)

 

Download the Editors’ Introduction as PDF
In full, including Parts I & II, Appendices, and Illustrations.
You may also download the following separately for side-by-side reading:
– Appendix A
– Appendix B
– Appendix C
– Illustrations