pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

Descartes’ correspondence supplements and comments on a wide range of
subjects in his published works concerning philosophy, physiology, mathematics
and natural philosophy. Many of the letters are illustrated. Some
352 letters are included in these volumes (almost half the letters in modern
editions), including many addressed to Hobbes, Fermat, De Roberval, Henry
More, Mersenne, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Queen Christina of
Sweden. The title to volume 3 announces that the letters reply to diYculties
relating to Descartes’ works on dioptrics, geometry and various other scientiWc
subjects.
When Descartes left for Sweden he left a suitcase of papers to be opened
after his death. Few if any of the letters printed here come from that collection.
Descartes took another suitcase of letters with him, some of which he had
already prepared for publication. When he died in his Wrst winter in Sweden
his letters came into the possession of Hector­Pierre Chanut (1600–1662),
the French ambassador in Sweden. He began to arrange them for publication
with the help of Christiaan Huygens but in the end handed them over to
Claude Clerselier (1614–1684), who had already started to translate and edit
a selection based on draft letters in his possession. Clerselier’s French edition,
Lettres de Monsieur Descartes, (3 volumes, Paris, Charles Angot, 1657–1667) is
the Wrst collective edition of Descartes correspondence.
Although the Latin edition is basically a translation of the Clerselier’s French
edition, the editor, who remains anonymous, had access to other texts and in
some cases the texts printed in the Epistolae are closer to the originals.
The publishing history of the Latin edition is complex. Daniel Elzevier
intended to print all three volumes, as is clear from the preface to the Wrst volume,
but only issued the Wrst two, in 1668, with co­editions issued in London.
After Elzevier’s death, Blaeu took over the publication, reprinted the Wrst two
volumes in 1682 and printed the third volume in 1683 (see Willems, Les Elzevier
1393 and Berghman’s Supplément 369). This set, in contemporary English
bindings is made up of the London issues of the Wrst two volumes, perhaps
purchased on publication, or held by a bookseller, and the Amsterdam edition
of the third volume. There was never a London issue of the third volume.
The London isssues of the Wrst two volumes are diVerent from each other
in that the Wrst is an entirely new setting, bibliographically therefore a new
edition, while the second is a re­issue of the Amsterdam edition, with only the
two preliminary leaves re­set. In both cases however it is clear that Elzevier
was directly involved. In the Wrst volume the same blocks are used for printing
the illustrations in both the Amsterdam and London editions (in the London
edition they are printed on inserted leaves, rather than integrated with the text).
The type is almost identical but not quite. I have been unable to determine if
the text of the London volume 1 was printed in London and the woodcut plates
in Amsterdam; or all in London; or all in Amsterdam. On the other hand,
the typography of the prelims, the use of the same initial letter P (Berghman,
Etudes sur la bibliographie Elzevirienne no. 325) and a text woodcut used as a
titlepage device, strongly suggest that these leaves were set and printed in
Amsterdam. This is probably also the case in the second volume, the prelims
of which are reset for the London issue, using the same text woodcut on the
titlepage. It seems certain that there was close collaboration between Elzevier
in Amsterdam and Dunmore and Pulleyn in London, but that this relationship
was lost when Blaeu took over the publication.