Astronomers' Library


Book Description

The Astronomers' Library is a dynamic collection of the best astronomy books from across the past eight centuries.




In Search of William Gascoigne


Book Description

William Gascoigne (c.1612-44) was the inventor of the telescopic sight and micrometer (instruments crucial to the advance of astronomy). His name is now known to historians of science around the world. For some considerable time after his tragic death at the age of 32 in the English Civil War, however, it seemed as if his achievements would be consigned to oblivion. Most of his papers were lost and even the few that survived have largely disappeared. This is the story of how his work was rescued. Into this story is woven an account of the state of astronomy and optics during Gascoigne’s lifetime, so that the reader can appreciate the significance of his discoveries.










Thomas Harriot: Science and Discovery in the English Renaissance


Book Description

This volume sheds new light on one of the most remarkable polymaths of the English Renaissance. It offers original perspectives not only on Harriot’s personal achievements in mathematics and natural philosophy but also on the wider realms of exploration, colonial ambition, and philosophical debate in which he earned the attention and respect of contemporaries in and far beyond the socially elevated circles of his two great patrons, first Walter Ralegh and then Henry Percy, the ninth Earl of Northumberland. Harriot’s sixteenth-century world was one of unprecedented expansion in both scientific understanding and the discovery of new lands and peoples. The essays gathered here bring out forcefully the effect of this expanding vision, encapsulated in Harriot’s Briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1588), the first detailed description of America to be published in the English language. In addition to an essay by a recent biographer of Harriot, the volume contains reworked versions of seven Thomas Harriot Lectures, an annual lecture series inaugurated in 1990 in Oriel College, Oxford. It follows two earlier volumes of Harriot Lectures, also edited by Robert Fox, that appeared in 2000 and 2012.




"For My Worthy Freind Mr Franciscus Junius"


Book Description

This edition includes the complete correspondence of Francis Junius (1591–1677), who may be called the father of modern art theory and of comparative Germanic philology. The edition offers insight into this Dutch scholar’s life and studies in the context of his family, friends, and employment by the English Arundel family. All were intimately associated with the leading circles of scholars, aristocrats and dignitaries in the Low Countries and England. The corpus of 226 Latin, English and Dutch letters has been edited with generous annotations, English translations, an introduction, and a critical apparatus. The letters are an invaluable source of detail for students of seventeenth-century intellectual history, English and Dutch elite culture, Germanic philology, art history, and learned networks.







The Antiquary


Book Description

John Aubrey (1626-1697), antiquary, natural philosopher, and virtuoso, is best-remembered today for his Brief Lives, biographies of his contemporaries filled with luminous detail which have been mined for anecdotes by generations of scholars. However, Aubrey was much more than merely the hand behind an invaluable source of biographical material; he was also the author of thousands of pages of manuscript notebooks covering everything from the origins of Stonehenge to the evolution of folklore. Kelsey Jackson Williams explores these manuscripts in full for the first time and in doing so illuminates the intricacies of Aubrey's investigations into Britain's past. The Antiquary is both a major new study of an important early modern writer and a significant intervention in the developing historiography of antiquarianism. It discusses the key aspects of Aubrey's work in a series of linked chapters on archaeology, architecture, biography, folklore, and philology, concluding with a revisionist interpretation of Aubrey's antiquarian writings. While covering a wide variety of scholarly territory, it remains rooted in the common thread of Aubrey's own intellectual development and the continual interaction between his texts as he studied, discovered, revised, and rewrote them across four decades. Its conclusions not only substantially reshape our understanding of Aubrey and his works, but also provide new understandings of the methodologies, ambitions, and achievements of antiquarianism across early modern Europe.