Winner of the 2017 John Thackray Medal awarded by the Society for the History of Natural History, U.K. Martin Lister (1639–1712) was a consummate virtuoso, the first arachnologist and conchologist, and a Royal physician. As one of the most prominent corresponding fellows of the Royal Society, many of Lister’s discoveries in natural history, archaeology, medicine, and chemistry were printed in the Philosophical Transactions. Lister corresponded extensively with explorers and other virtuosi such as John Ray, who provided him with specimens, observations, and locality records from Jamaica, America, Barbados, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and his native England. This volume of ca. 400 letters (one of three), consists of Lister’s correspondence dated from 1662 to 1677, including his time as a Cambridge Fellow, his medical training in Montpellier, and his years as a practicing physician in York.

"For the first time full authoritative texts of Darwin's are made available, edited according to modern textual editorial principles and practice. Letter-writing was of crucial importance to Darwin's work, not only because his poor health isolated him from direct personal communication with his scientific colleagues but also because the nature of his investigations required communication with naturalists in many fields and in all quarters of the globe. Thus the letters are a mine of information about the work in progress of a creative genius who produced an intellectual revolution." --

"For the first time full authoritative texts of Darwin's are made available, edited according to modern textual editorial principles and practice. Letter-writing was of crucial importance to Darwin's work, not only because his poor health isolated him from direct personal communication with his scientific colleagues but also because the nature of his investigations required communication with naturalists in many fields and in all quarters of the globe. Thus the letters are a mine of information about the work in progress of a creative genius who produced an intellectual revolution." --

Hiob Ludolf (1624-1704) and Johann Michael Wansleben (1635-1679), the master and his erstwhile student could not be more different. Ludolf was a celebrated member of the Republic of Letters and the towering authority on Ethiopian studies. Wansleben, himself a brilliant scholar and, unlike Ludolf, a seasoned traveller in the Middle East, converted to Catholicism and eventually died impoverished and marginalized. Both stood at the centre of the burgeoning study of Ethiopia and spent a formative part of their career in middle sized Duchy of Saxe-Gotha which for several years played a pivotal role in Ethiopian-European encounters. This volume offers in-depth studies of the remarkable life and work of these two scholars in a broader intellectual, political, and confessional context.

The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain over 1,300 letters written both to and from Bentham over a 50-year period, beginning in 1752 (aged three) with his earliest surviving letter to his grandmother, and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national scheme for the provision of poor relief. Against the background of the debates on the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789, to which he made significant contributions, Bentham worked first on producing a complete penal code, which involved him in detailed explorations of fundamental legal ideas, and then on his panopticon prison scheme. Despite developing a host of original and ground-breaking ideas, contained in a mass of manuscripts, he published little during these years, and remained, at the close of this period, a relatively obscure individual. Nevertheless, these volumes reveal how the foundations were laid for the remarkable rise of Benthamite utilitarianism in the early nineteenth century. Bentham’s correspondence reveals that in the late 1770s he was working intensively on developing a code of penal law, but also expanding his acquaintance and, to a moderate degree, enhancing his reputation as a legal thinker. A significant family event took place in 1779 when his brother Samuel went to Russia in order to make his fortune.

James Cook’s voyages of exploration are a turning point not only in the history of the British Empire, but also in the history of science and exploration of the Pacific. The last decades have seen a wide-ranging scholarly interest in Cook’s voyages, focusing on their impact on European and Polynesian societies, their scientific results, and their protagonists, such as Cook himself or the nobleman Joseph Banks who took part in Cook’s first voyage of exploration. This book examines the hitherto underestimated role of the German scholar Johann Reinhold Forster who, together with his son Georg Forster, accompanied Cook on his second voyage of exploration (1772–1775) as a principal naturalist. For a long time, the German traveler has remained a rather shadowy figure of Cook’s voyages of exploration and has only attracted scholarly attention occasionally. Focusing on the making of knowledge onboard the ship and the islands where it made landfall, the study provides a historical reappraisal of Forster’s scientific performance as a leading naturalist of his time. By examining Forster’s Resolution Journal, Anne Mariss takes a microhistorical approach toward the making of natural history knowledge during the expedition to the Pacific. Mariss unveils the difficulties the traveling naturalists encountered while collecting, describing, classifying, and painting the natural world. Her study brings to light the contribution of the various actors who were involved in this undertaking, such as the scientific assistants, sailors, officers, and the local actors of the Pacific world.