Letters menu

Letters - How many letters did Leeuwenhoek write?

  • Publications - all of the pamphlets and bound volumes of letters that Leeuwenhoek published himself between 1684 and 1718.
  • Figures - About half of the letters were illustrated with figures of what Leeuwenhoek saw and some of his tools, over 1200 figures in total.
  • Philosophical Transactions - This page begins to explain Leeuwenhoek's relationship with the Royal Society. It emphasizes the tenure of the editors, which forms the basis for my division of the letters into Periods as well as the divisions of the master timeline on the Timeline drop-down menu.
  • List of articles - all the articles in Philosophical Transactions authored by Leeuwenhoek, as well as a relevant few others.

Clicking on an article title will take you to a page about it with a link to the Royal Society web site that will either display the letter or download the .pdf, depending on your browser. For example, clicking on the third item, A Specimen of Some Observations ..., the first authored by Leeuwenhoek, will display its page in the Bibliography.

Note the link back to the letter from which the article was extracted.

Clicking on the doi will display the letter on the Royal Society web site.

The seven periods of Leeuwenhoek's letter writing.

and year-by-year. Note the little menu at the top right of each page in this period.:

  • Chronology - all of the letters written during that period
  • Period 2, etc. - an introductory page and a chronology for each period

Clicking on a link there, for example the first one, Wrote letter of 1673-04-28 (AB 1) to Henry Oldenburg will take you its page. Each page for the first 269 letters has a link to the "Text of the letter" at DBNL.org in both Dutch and English, that is, the online Alle de Brieven / Collected Letters.