Robert Hooke’s Books

Welcome to this online source on the library of the 17th-century virtuoso Robert Hooke (1635-1703). It is an on-going collaboration between three scholars who are currently undertaking research on different aspects of Hooke’s work. It is a work-in-progress; further information and more advanced database functionalities will be added in the future. Comments and additions from users are especially welcome!

There are two main sections to the site:

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

on Hooke’s activities as a book collector, with assessments of the Bibliotheca Hookiana (London, 1703), the auction catalogue prepared after his death, and the annotations in the books extant from his library. Future additions and updates to this text will be identified with version numbers and publicized via the announcements page.

HOOKE’S BOOKS DATABASE

a searchable transcription of the Bibliotheca Hookiana (London, 1703) plus a list of other books that have been attributed to Hooke via his annotations but that are not listed in the auction catalogue. It includes the editors’ research notes and current locations of the extant books; it can be searched or browsed.

Other sections provide support material:

  • REFERENCES section contains the list of sources used in the editorial notes, the surviving copies of the Bibliotheca Hookiana (1703) as well as bibliographic information on its modern facsimile editions, and links to the websites of repositories that have books extant from Hooke’s library in their collections.
  • ABOUT section has information regarding the project, its editors and their acknowledgements, as well as announcements, and a site map.