We aim to create a central repository of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century correspondence populated with metadata drawn from the widest variety of sources worldwide, and increasingly representative of the early modern Republic of Letters as a whole. We are pursuing this aim by experimenting with a variety of methods and approaches to metadata aggregation simultaneously:
- Ingesting the digital catalogues of major scholarly projects in this field and linking through to their digital archives where available;
- Ingesting the digital catalogues of collections and archives with rich holdings of relevant material;
- Collecting the digital files of recent and forthcoming printed editions and inventories of correspondence, from which metadata can be extracted efficiently and accurately;
- Scanning existing printed inventories of correspondence and outsourcing their keying;
- Piloting controlled crowd-sourcing of metadata for key correspondences via a distributed community of EMLO Digital Fellows;
- Publishing digital images of corpora of learned correspondence within EMLO and inviting collaborators to catalogue these letters directly within the editorial interface.
The volume of material, in digital and print form, potentially included in the catalogue by combining these methods is vast. For a checklist of some relevant material, see our Links page. Expanding organically from our current focus on the scientific correspondences of the mid- to late-seventeenth century, we aim by the end of 2014 to have assembled metadata on the letters of the following epistolary superstars. More will be added to this page on an ongoing basis, as negotiations with relevant colleagues are completed.
- Johannes Heinrich Alsted
- 1588–1638
- 240 letters
Not in.
- Johann Valentin Andreae
- 1586–1654
- 1000+
In! Explore.
- John Aubrey
- (1650–1700)
- 1,073 letters
In! Explore.
- Caspar Barlaeus
- (1584–1648)
- 505 letters
In! Explore.
- Pierre Bayle
- (1647–1706)
- 1,600 letters
In! Explore.
- Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld
- (1605–1655)
- 121 letters
In! Explore.
- Bodleian Card Catalogue
- (letters dated 1508–1829)
- 48,691 letters
In! Explore.
- Antoinette Bourignon
- (1616–1680)
- 800 letters
In! Explore.
- Tycho Brahe
- (1546–1601)
- 447 letters
In! Explore.
- Jan Amos Comenius
- (1647–1706)
- 558 letters
In! Explore.
- Christian Daum
- (1612–1687)
- 5,300 letters
Not in.
- René Descartes
- (1596–1650)
- 727 letters
In! Explore.
- Abraham von Frankenberg
- (1593–1652)
- 84 letters
In! Explore.
- Galileo Galilei
- (1564–1642)
- c.4,000 letters
Not in.
- Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil
- (1593–1661)
- 90 letters
Not in.
- Hugo Grotius
- (1583–1645)
- 8.034 letters
In! Explore.
- Samuel Hartlib
- (c.1600–1662)
- 4,591 letters
In! Explore.
- Thomas Hobbes
- (1588–1679)
- 211 letters
Not in.
- Christiaan Huygens
- (1629–1695)
- 3,090 letters
In! Explore.
- Constantijn Huygens
- (1596–1687)
- 7,927 letters
In! Explore.
- Johannes Kepler
- (1571–1630)
- 1,146 letters
In! Explore.
- Cyprian Kinner
- (c.1600–1649)
- 112 letters
Not in.
- Athanasius Kircher
- (1602–1680)
- 2,300 letters
In! Explore.
- Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
- (1632–1723)
- 282 letters
In! Explore.
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- (1646–1716)
- 15,000 letters
Not in.
- Edward Lhwyd
- (1659–1709)
- 2,128 letters
In! Explore.
- Martin Lister
- (1639–1712)
- 1,141 letters
In! Explore.
- Joseph Mede
- (1586–1638)
- 98 letters
Not in.
- Marin Mersenne
- (1588–1648)
- 1,100 letters
In! Explore.
- Johann Moriaen
- (c.1591–1668)
- 254 letters
Not in.
- Henry Oldenburg
- (1618–1677)
- 3,100 letters
In! Explore.
- Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc
- (1580–1637)
- 7,000 letters
In! Explore.
- Johann Permeier
- (1597–1644)
- 89 letters
In! Explore.
- Joseph Justus Scaliger
- (1540–1609)
- 1,670 letters
In! Explore.
- Johannes Schefferus
- (1621–1679)
- 300 letters
Not in.
- Wilhelm Schickart
- (1592–1635)
- 824 letters
Not in.
- John Selden
- (1584–1654)
- 355 letters
In! Explore.
- Elizabeth Stuart
- (1596–1662)
- 1,700 letters
In! Explore.
- Jan Swammerdam
- (1637–1680)
- 172 letters
In! Explore.
- Ralph Thoresby
- (1658–1725)
- 2,700 letters
Not in.
- James Ussher
- (1581–1656)
- 648 letters
Not in.
- Gerhard Joannes Vossius
- (1577–1649)
- 3,429 letters
In! Explore.
- Isaak Vossius
- (1618–1689)
- 100+ letters
In! Explore.
- John Wallis
- (1647–1706)
- 2,002 letters
In! Explore.
- Ole Worm
- (1588–1654)
- 1,796 letters
Not in.