Printing and the Mind of Man 148 (exhibiting Vol. 1).
A long and unbroken run of the first 426 issues of the world’s oldest continuous and most important scientific journal. Containing important and groundbreaking research by Isaac Newton (including his very first scientific publication), Edmond Halley, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and John Flamsteed, correspondence with news on scientific matters from across Europe and important and detailed book reviews. The papers include new and important work on chemistry, medicine, natural history, mathematics, physics, astronomy, and meteorology alongside strange and unusual subjects such as monstrous births and unexplained natural phenomena. The journal is a product of the burgeoning Anglo-European scientific milieu but the content also looks further afield and contains information on scientific discoveries and observations in North America, the West Indies and even China.
T. H. Huxley declared in 1870: “If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical Transactions, were destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though incompletely, recorded.”
The first meeting of what would become the Royal Society (it received its Royal Charter from Charles II in 1662) was held on the 28 November 1660 at Gresham College in London attended by a small group of regular members including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle and William Petty. The first joint secretary (alongside John Wilkins) of the Royal Society was the German-born Henry Oldenburg (c.1618-1677) but it was not until 1665 that he proposed the publication of the Philosophical Transactions. It was to be a private venture - "the financial and editorial responsibility was entirely Oldenburg’s (Andrade) and was to remain so until 1752 - to be published under the Society’s aegis and drawn largely from its meetings, and the papers and correspondence of its members."
Publication of the Philosophical Transactions was continued by Oldenburg despite great hardships including the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the Anglo-Dutch wars of 1665-67 (when his extensive European correspondence brought him under suspicion of espionage and a brief incarceration in the Tower of London) and 1672-74. There was a further interruption of three years after Vol. XVI (1686/7), presumably due to the political upheavals of the Glorious Revolution.
Important individual issues of the Philosophical Transactions include No. 80 (February 19 1671/2), the final issue of Vol. VII, which begins with, “A letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Mathematick Professor in the University of Cambridge; containing his New Theory about Light and Colors”, **the first scientific publication by Isaac Newton and the first description of the nature of the spectrum. In all, there are 17 contributions by Newton across Vols. V-XI. (**A set of just these volumes sold for $76,500 at Christie’s in 2022 while disbound extracts with his first contribution only have sold for £17,500 at Christie’s in 2019 and $12,800 at a Minnesota auction in 2022).
“Every time one turns the pages of these early volumes of the Transactions something of interest hitherto unnoticed catches the eye. To provide a balanced summary of what they comprise would demand systematic consideration in much detail of the rise not only of modern science, physical and biological, but of many aspects of technology and industry in general.” (Andrade).
Until recently there had been little bibliographical research into the printing of the early issues of the Transactions. It was known that the earliest issues were printed in much smaller numbers than later ones (by mid-1665 1000 copies were apparently being printed) and that there was soon a demand to reprint them once and, in some cases, twice – the first time before the Fire of London (2-6 September 1666) and then for a few issues again a little later. But this had not been investigated at all until the PhD Thesis of James Phillip Ascher, “Reading for Enlightenment in the Beginning of Philosophical Transactions” (University of Virginia, May 2021), available online.
Ascher examined the first two years (22 issues) of the Transactions in detail. From his descriptions we can say that our set has the first printings of Nos. 1-4, the second printing of No. 5 (with the 1st state of the plate), No. 6 has an undescribed intermediate state of sheet ‘O’ and first printings of sheets P-Q, No. 8 is the first printing, No. 9 is the first printing (but with an undescribed variant imprint with “Allestree” for “Allestry”), No. 10 is the second printing, Nos. 12-13 have the variations listed by Ascher “indicating a separate impression” of the only printing (2nd state of the plate in No. 13), Nos. 14-15 are the only printing, No. 16 is the first printing (except that it has ‘lisher ;’ for ‘lisher ,’ on p. 281 (2nd state of the plate), No. 17 is the 1st state of the only printing, No. 18 is the first printing, No. 19 is the second printing by ‘T. R.’, No. 20 is the first printing by Moses Pitt, Nos. 21-22 are the only printing (1st state of the plate in No. 21).
Beyond this, Ascher gives more limited bibliographical details up to Vol. XLVII (1751). We have compared this set with two sets at the Royal Society and the digitised set on their website, the Natural History Museum set (on the Biodiversity Heritage Library website) and the set at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (on HathiTrust)
This set has a few minor defects. It lacks: the titles, and preliminary leaves (title, dedication and index) to Vols. II, IV-Vi & XV; Vol. III lacks the dedication leaf found in some copies; Vol. IV also lacks two leaves of advertisements for books sold by John Martyn and a few leaves have been misbound. Ascher cites an addendum (not present here) to No. 56, George Acton’s Physical Reflections upon a Letter written by J. Denis ... Concerning a New Way of Curing sundry Diseases by Transfusion of Blood (1668) but this is in fact a separate publication bound with the UC-Berkeley and Queen’s College, Oxford sets.
It is worth noting that when long runs of the Philosophical Transactions have appeared at auction they have been sold as periodicals, not subject to return. It is only through fully collating this set - as we have done - that we have discovered the discrepancies above which almost certainly appear in most copies and are testament to the way in which the Transactions were published on a regular basis despite many impediments.
This set has a total of 380 engraved plates (306 folding). It lacks 11 of the plates noted by Ascher and part of another in Nos. 27 [found in only 1 copy], 129 [Ascher cites 2 plates, but most copies have 1 as here], 207 (fig. 3 only of 3), 280 (has 1 plate of 2), 347 (missing 2 plates), 355 (missing 1 plate), 360 (missing 2 plates), 384 (missing 3 plates). It has 5 plates not noted by Ascher but present in other copies in Nos. 179, 339, 352, 418 (2 plates).
Provenance: There are contemporary manuscript corrections (often to mathematical formulas) on more than 60 pages and notes/additions on more than 20 pages with 3 leaves of manuscript notes on the measurement of the Earth tipped-into No. 112 (March 25, 1675); a note at the end of No. 16 (August 6, 1666) “M. Mr. Euelin” must refer to the diarist and writer John Evelyn, a member of the society, but its purpose is not evident; there is a gift inscription from Robert Hooke (1635-1703) at the end of No. 196 (Jan. 1692/3 “Donu[m] Authoris RHooke” in the hand of the unidentified recipient. Hooke’s only acknowledged contribution to the issue was “The Abstract of two Letters sent some time since by Mr. Anth. Van. Leeuwenhoeck to Dr. Gale and Dr. Hooke.”
The set was bound for Sir Marcus Beresford, Lord Viscount Tyrone, and has his armorial bookplate in each volume. Marcus Beresford (1694-1763) succeeded his father as 4th Baronet in 1701 and was created Baron Beresford and Viscount Tyrone in 1715 and Earl of Tyrone in 1746. His oldest surviving son George (1735-1800) was created Marquess of Waterford in 1789; thence by descent.
Literature: E. N. da C. Andrade, “The Birth and Early Days of the Philosophical Transactions,” in Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 20/1 (June 1965), pp. 9-27; David A. Kronick, “Noes on the Printing History of the Early ‘Philosophical Transactions’,” in Libariries & Culture, Vol. 25/2 (Spring 1990), pp. 243-68; Noah Moxam & Aileen Fufe, “The first Phlosophical Transactiions, 1665-1677", in Moxham, Fyfe, et al., eds, A History of Scientific Journals: Pubishing at the R9oal Society 1665-2015 (UCL Prwess, 2022). Philosophical Transactions: 350 years of publishing at the Royal Society (1665-2015), exhibition catalogue (2015).
