Robert Boyle (1627-91) was the most influential British scientist of the late seventeenth century. His huge archive, which has been at the Royal Society since 1769, has only recently been explored, leading to a new understanding of many aspects of Boyle's thought. This volume brings together the essential materials for understanding the Boyle Papers. It includes a revised version of Michael Hunter's fundamental study of the archive, first published in 1992, which elucidates its history and the way in which handwriting evidence can be used to identify chronological strata within it, thus making it possible to trace the development of Boyle's ideas. Other chapters deal with such components of the Papers as Boyle's 'workdiaries' and his projected Paralipomena; another uses material from the archive to illuminate the making of a key work by Boyle, his Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv'd Notion of Nature; while another illustrates that, large as the archive is, it is only a part of what existed in Boyle's lifetime. Parts of the content have been published before, but they are here presented in revised and fully indexed form. Lastly, the volume includes a completely revised version of the catalogue of the Boyle Papers, Letters and ancillary manuscripts originally published in 1992, updating it by tabulating the extensive use of the archive made in recent years in connection with the publication of the definitive editions of Boyle's Works and Correspondence (1999-2001). In all, the volume will be indispensable to anyone with a serious interest in Boyle.

A re-evaluation of Boyle in the light of new evidence of his tortured religious life and his difficult relations with his contemporaries.

"The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability. . . . Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of the Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle's works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars." --Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania

Inventory of the estate, 10 February 1917, compiled by attorneys, Lee & Moise (Sumter (S.C.); efforts during 1917 by his children to prevent foreclosure on real estate; receipt, 14 April 1917, from the city of Sumter (S.C.), illustrated with a gamecock chicken printed in red.

The significance of Robert Boyle (1627-91) as the most influential English scientist in the generation before Newton is now generally acknowledged, but the complexity and eclecticism of his ideas has also become increasingly apparent. This volume presents an important group of studies of Boyle by Michael Hunter, the leading expert on Boyle’s life and thought. It forms a sequel to two previous books: Hunter’s Robert Boyle: Scrupulosity and Science (2000) and The Boyle Papers: Understanding the Manuscripts of Robert Boyle (2007). Like them, it conveniently brings together material otherwise widely scattered in essay volumes and academic journals, while nearly a third of the book’s content is hitherto unpublished. The collection opens with a substantial introduction that places the studies that follow in the context of existing studies of Boyle; appended to it is an annotated edition of Boyle’s telling list of desiderata for science. The next three essays comprise a group of essentially biographical studies, exploring various aspects of Boyle’s life and intellectual evolution, after which three others provide further evidence of the ’convoluted’ Boyle divulged in Robert Boyle: Scrupulosity and Science. Finally, we have two chapters, one hitherto published only in French and the other not at all, which throw important light on topics that preoccupied Boyle in the last few years of his life - the supernatural and the exotic. Together, these essays add greater depth to our understanding of Boyle, both as an individual and as a natural philosopher.