Works Part II

Beginning in 1687, Leeuwenhoek published eight quarto volumes of letters, picking up where the pamphlets left off. The first of the eight, Vervolg der Brieven (Continuation of the Letters) written to the Royal Society in London, went through three editions, all printed by Boutesteyn in Leiden. He followed with a series publishing groups of seven or eight letters with consistent titles whose numbering gave no indication of the contents: Tweede, Derde, etc.

In addition, Leeuwenhoek continued publishing the letters in Latin translation. The Dutch cover pages are on the left sidebar; the Latin cover pages are on the right sidebar. The vellum-bound volume of Arcana Naturae on the right was printed by Krooneveld in 1695 as sort of a catch-up volume, with some earlier letters not included in the pamphlets but written during the same years. These were the six letters published by Daniel van Gaesbeeck under four titles in 1684.

Dobell includes the eight letters (#53-60) written in 1687 in the second part of the four-part Werken. Cole includes these eight letters in the first part.

Dutch

Perhaps Leeuwenhoek needed the first couple of years publishing the letters singly and in small groups to learn how to best package his work. By 1687, he seemed started publishing larger groups of letters, usually in chronological order under fewer and more systemic titles: Tweede (Second), Derde (Third), etc.

Latin

In 1695, he repeated the sequence he had used with Boutesteyn in Leiden for his first group of Latin translations, this time in Delft with Hendrik Kroonevelt. He published Arcana Naturae Detecta with 38 letters, the first 6 of which filled in the "missing" letters from 1687, and extended from 61-92.

In 1697, he published the Continuatio Arcanorum Naturae Detectorum, the continuation of these letters, picking up the chronological sequence with the next fifteen letters, 93 through 107.

Twenty years later, Leeuwenhoek had enough letters to continue. Edmond Halley had been editing Philosophical Transactions again, since 1715, and again not publishing any of Leeuwenhoek's letters. Boutesteyn and Kroonevelt were both dead, so Leeuwenhoek turned to Adriaan Beman in Delft and Johan Langerak in Leiden to publish the next batch of 46 letters. We do not know why Leeuwenhoek numbered them with Roman numerals, beginning from I, instead of continuing where he had left off at 146.

Other bundles of these titles are available at libraries and online.

Who paid for the 1730 printing, seven years after Leeuwenhoek's death? Presumably Maria, his daughter, needed more copies. For what purpose? Why that one, or is that the one she had run out of? Did she run out of it because so few were printed? Or because it was a popular title?

Summary of Characteristics

For later editions, only differences noted.

* In some bundle, Letter 65 is separately paginated.