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PITHY QUOTE FROM Boyle: Works

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A Mere fine Gentleman, is a woman with a Beard & a paire of Breeches.

The Works of Robert Boyle. Volume 13, Unpublished Writings, 1645-c. 1670. 1. Early Writings, c. Scriptural reflections moral essays and miscellaneous

The Works of Robert Boyle. Electronic Edition. book cover

The Works of Robert Boyle. Electronic Edition.

ISBN: 978-1-57085-258-9

Language: English

MARC Records



Robert Boyle. New experiments physico-mechanical, touching the spring of the air, and its effects : (made for the most part, in a new pneumatical engine) written by way of letter to the Right Honorable Charles, Lord Viscount of Dungarvan, eldest son to the Earl of Corke. 2nd ed. Oxford: Printed by H. Hall, 1662

List of Contents

The Works of Robert Boyle contains the first new scholarly edition of Boyle’s work to be published since 1772, including all the published works and hitherto unpublished writings by Boyle, representing the most substantial publication of new material by him since his lifetime. Works originally in Latin are presented in their contemporary English translations. Introductory matter surveys Boyle’s intellectual career and provides a definitive account of the composition and publishing history of each work. Fully annotated.


Boyle, Robert. The Works of Robert Boyle. Edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis. 14 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999-2000.

  • Vol. 1. General Introduction, Textual Note, Invitation to Free Communication, 1655; Perreaud’s Devil of Mascon, 1658; de Bils’s Large Act of Anatomy, 1659; Seraphic Love, 1659, 1663; Spring of the Air, 1660.
  • Vol. 2. Certain Physiological Essays, 2nd ed., 1669; Sceptical Chymist, 1661; Style of the Scriptures, 1661.
  • Vol. 3. Defence and Examen, 1662; Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, I and II sect 1, 1663.
  • Vol. 4. Experiments touching Colours, 1664; New Experiments touching Cold, 1665.
  • Vol. 5. Occasional Reflections, 1665; Hydrostatical Paradoxes, 1666; Origin of Forms and Qualities, 1666, 1667; Phil. Trans. papers. 1665-7.
  • Vol. 6. ‘New Experiments’, Phil. Trans., 1668,1670; Spring of the Air, 1st Continuation, 1669; Absolute Rest in Bodies, 1669; Rarefaction of the Air, 1670; Cosmical Qualities, 1670; Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, II sect 2, 1671.
  • Vol. 7. Origin and Virtues of Gems, 1672; Relations betwixt Flame and Air, 1672; Essays of Effluviums, 1673; Saltness of the Sea, 1673; Phil. Trans. items, 1671-3.
  • Vol. 8. Excellency of Theology, 1674; Hidden Qualities of the Air, 1674; Reason and Religion, 1675; Mechanical Origin of Qualities, 1675; Phil. Trans. items, 1674-6.
  • Vol. 9. Degradation of Gold, 1678; Producibleness of Chymical Principles, 1680; Spring of the Air, 2d Continuation Eng. Trans., 1682; Aerial Noctiluca, 1680; Icy Noctiluca, 1682; Things above Reason, 1681; Salt-water Sweetened, 1683; Items contributed to Hooke’s Philosophical Collections and various Phil. Trans. articles.
  • Vol. 10. Natural History of Human Blood, 1684; Experiments about Porosity, 1684; High Veneration to God, 1684-5; Experimental History of Mineral Waters, 1685; Languid and Unheeded Motion, 1685; Specific Medicines, 1685; Vulgarly Receiv’d Notion of Nature, 1686.
  • Vol. 11. Martyrdom of Theodora, 1687; Final Causes, 1688; Advertisement, 1688; Some Receipts of Medicines, 1688; Catalogue of Writings, 1688; Medicina Hydrostatica, 1690; Christian Virtuoso, 1690-1; Experimenta et Observationes Physicae, 1691.
  • Vol. 12. Posthumous Phil. Trans. papers; General History of the Air, 1692; Medicinal Experiments, 1692-4; Discourse against Customary Swearing, 1695; Christian Virtuoso I, Appendix, and II, 1744; Papers in Birch’s Life of Boyle, 1744.
  • Vols. 13/14. Hitherto unpublished writings by Boyle, representing the most substantial publication of new material by him since his lifetime. These include such early writings as the original version of Boyle’s Martyrdom of Theodora; writings from Boyle’s early scientific phase in the early 1650s; discarded sections of published works, including Usefulness of Natural Philosophy and Vulgarly Receiv’d Notion of Nature; and fragments of works never published. Also included is a complete text of Boyle’s inventories of his unpublished writings, a key source for his intellectual evolution, and an index to the edition as a whole.


The most important reason [for emerging research on Boyle] is the extraordinarily intensive and extensive work of Michael Hunter, who has done more for Boyle studies than anyone before him (or, one might almost say, than all previous Boyle scholars put together). Apart from writing and editing volumes of essays on Boyle, he has also produced the first scholarly catalogue of the Boyle papers; he has edited (with Edward Davis) Boyle’s works, in fourteen volumes; and now, with Antonio Clericuzio and [Lawrence] Principe, he has produced the first ever edition of Boyle’s complete correspondence, in six volumes containing more than 3,000 pages. . . . This is a monumental work of scholarship, an indispensable resource for all future studies of Boyle’s life and thought.

—Noel Malcolm
"Of Air and Alchemy"
Times Literary Supplement