‘Your most humble servant’: the letters of Antony van Leeuwenhoek

Abstract

Antony van Leeuwenhoek's entire output is contained in the hundreds of letters that he wrote from 1673 to 1723. This article discusses the content, features, and circumstances of the letters and their contemporary publishing history, especially in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions, as well as a brief history of the project begun in 1932 to publish a complete edition of Leeuwenhoek's letters in Dutch and English translation with linguistic, scientific, and historical annotations.