News-sheet — April 2009
I. This month's update
Biographies
Over 40 new and expanded biographical notes have been provided for correspondents appearing in EE, many of them from the new material listed below. These include such figures as:
- Francis Aston (1645–1715), English academy member;
- comte Jean Jacques de Beausobre (1704–1783), Swiss general in French service and translator;
- Claude Fauchet (1744–1793), French clergyman and revolutionary politician;
- Jean Claude Adrien Helvétius (1685–1755), French physician, courtier and academy member;
- Caspar Neumann (1648–1715), German clergyman;
- abbé Jean Louis Prieur (1731–1771), French priest, teacher and scrivener;
- Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), French author and botanist;
- Johann Christoph Sturm (1635–1703), German theologian, mathematician and astronomer;
- Johann Weichart Valvasor (1641–1693), Slovenian scholar, polymath and academy member.
Documents
We have added 42 new documents to our corpus including translations of letters found in Halley's correspondence and the final volume of the Helvétius edition.
Correspondence and papers of Edmond Halley. The correspondence of the astronomer Edmund Halley includes 24 scientific letters in Latin, for which translations were not provided in the source edition. We have now translated these letters into English, extending access to the correspondence of this important man of science. Read below:
- 8 December 1705 — an elegant letter from Leibniz to "the most celebrated gentleman Edmond Halley".
Correspondance générale d'Helvétius. The correspondence of Claude Adrien Helvétius is now completed in EE with inclusion of the fifth and final volume from the University of Toronto, published in 2004. This will add a further 18 letters to the collection, and a further 6 people to EE’s list of correspondents. Read a sample letter below:
- 12 March 1741 — Helvetius's father to the Marquise Du Châtelet about physics and Leibniz.
Editions
This month EE is pleased to begin publication of a previously unpublished edition of correspondence.
Digital correspondence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. April 2009 marks publication of the first tranche of a collection of letters prepared specifically for born-digital publication in EE. The Digital correspondence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, ed. Malcolm Cook et al. (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008–) includes over 200 letters dated between 1760 and 1790, and adds nearly 30 new correspondents to EE’s biographical database.
See our biographical note on this writer, and a sample letter below:
- Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre;
- 7 August 1788 — a letter from the French Navy minister to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who had asked for a pension.