Early Letters: original manuscripts of letters to the Royal Society
Includes letters from 1613; 1642; 1651-1740
contents available online in Royal Society's Collections
Four of these volumes are exclusively Leeuwenhoek's letters.
Early Letters L1: 80 letters and translations from 1674 to 1686
Early Letters L2: 56 letters and translations from 1686 to 1696
Early Letters L3: 85 letters and translations from 1697 to 1705
Early Letters L4: 87 letters and translations from 1607 to 1723
'Early letters': letters from correspondents in natural philosophy sent to the Royal Society and its Fellows
38 volumes containing 4,390 items
Incoming letters to the Royal Society via its secretaries, officers and Fellows, on natural philosophy topics. Generally from the period 1660-1740, but with smaller collections of earlier material These papers form the raw material from which the Royal Society's Letter Books and Register Books were compiled and many were published in the 'Philosphical Transactions' of the Royal Society. The series also contains English translations of foreign language letters, for example from the Dutch of Antoni van Leeuewenhoek. Other document formats, including printed material, have been preserved within this sequence.
Note
Images of the manuscripts themselves are not available online. The Royal Society's Collections web contains only information about the manuscripts.
