Bibliography

Hooke's library

An online project is aiming to build a database of all the books known to have been in Robert Hooke's personal library, with their current whereabouts. The website includes a searchable transcription of the Bibliotheca Hookiana (London, 1703), the auction catalogue prepared after his death, plus a list of other books that have been attributed to Hooke via his annotations but that are not listed in the auction catalogue.

Bibliotheca Hookiana

The auction catalogue for Hooke's library is also reprinted in H.A. Feisenberger, Sale catalogues of libraries of eminent persons, volume II, Scientists (Mansell, 1975), and in Leona Rostenberg, The Library of Robert Hooke: the scientific book trade of Restoration England (Modoc Press, 1989).

Works by Hooke

Sir Geoffrey Keynes compiled the definitive account of Hooke's own published work, although it is "not without errors". (Purrington 2006)

  • A bibliography of Dr Robert Hooke (Clarendon Press, 1960). Text available on loan from the Internet Archive.

Many of Hooke's publications have been digitized and are now freely available online, including:

  • Micrographia (1665).
    This is Hooke's magnum opus, "the most ingenious book that ever I read in my life", according to Samuel Pepys (diary entry for 21st January 1664/65). The Royal Society copy of the first edition is complete. It also includes unique manuscript annotations by an unknown hand in French and English added at the end of the volume. This digital version includes the full set of plates in their original sizes as well as all blank and text pages.
  • Animadversions on the first part of the Machina Coelestis of the honourable, learned and deservedly famous astronomer Johannes Hevelius, Consul of Dantzick, together with an explication of some instruments made by Robert Hooke (1674). Full text available
  • An attempt to prove the motion of the earth from observations (1674). Full text available
  • A Description of helioscopes and some other instruments (1676). Full text available
  • Lampas, Or, Descriptions of some mechanical improvements of lamps & waterpoises (1677). Full text available
  • Lectures de Potentia Restitutiva, Or of spring explaining the power of springing bodies (1678). Full text available
  • Lectiones Cutlerianae, or, A collection of lectures, physical, mechanical, geographical & astronomical : made before the Royal Society on several occasions at Gresham Colledge : to which are added divers miscellaneous discourses (1679). Full text available
  • Preface to An Historical relation of the Island of Ceylon in the East Indies by Robert Knox (1681). Hooke also seems to have edited the work and certainly saw it into print. Full text available
  • The Posthumous works of Robert Hooke ... containing his Cutlerian lectures and other discourses read at the meetings of the illustrious Royal Society (Richard Waller editor, 1705). Full text available
  • Philosophical experiments and observations of the late eminent Dr Robert Hooke (William Derham editor, 1726). Full text available

Moses Pitt's atlas

On 20th March 1678, Hooke examined the scheme of bookseller and printer Moses Pitt for a universal atlas of the world, and commented, "His design for Atlas good". He took the scheme to Christopher Wren for an opinion, and then the proposal was read to the Royal Society on 28th March with Wren in the chair. A committee was appointed to supervise its preparation, including Hooke, Wren, Theodore Haak and Nehemiah Grew.

Hooke took a more active role than the other committee members, and eventually Pitt made a private arrangement with him to check the maps and text before printing in return for a fee of £200.

Hooke's "very full notes on the method and content of each regional description indicate that in his geographical concepts he was centuries before his time". The atlas was initially intended to be eleven volumes but rising costs contributed to Pitt's final bankruptcy and only four volumes were ever produced. "Apart from a few pounds on account," Hooke "never received any payment from Pitt for all the work he actually did."

  • The English atlas (Moses Pitt, 1680). Full text available (link is to vol.1)
  • 'The English Atlas of Moses Pitt, 1680-83', by E.G.R.Taylor in The Geographical journal, vol.95, no.4 (April 1940), pp.292-299. Limited preview available, full article requires a subscription.

The diaries

Key sources for Hooke's life and work are his surviving diaries, covering the periods 1672-83, 1688-90 and 1692-93.

The manuscript of the diary for 1672-1683 is held by the London Metropolitan Archives of the City of London Corporation and has been digitized:

The diary of Robert Hooke, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., 1672-1680, a transcript edited by Henry William Robinson and Walter Adams (Taylor & Francis, 1935), is incomplete for its period of coverage. Felicity Henderson has supplied the missing entries in an article in the Royal Society's Notes and records:

R.T. Gunther covers the periods November 1688 to March 1690 and December 1692 to August 1693, but again the transcription is not entirely accurate.

The Diaries of Robert Hooke, by Richard Nichols (Book Guild, 1994), is not an edition, but an account of Hooke's life and work based on the diaries.

However, a new edition of the diaries is currently in preparation by Felicity Henderson.

Books about Hooke

After a long period of neglect, there has been an explosion in Hooke studies in recent years, as can be seen in this timeline. Some of the key general texts are available online, including:

  • F.F. Centore, Robert Hooke's contribution to mechanics: a study in seventeenth century natural philosophy (Martinus Nashoft, 1970). Text available on loan
  • Michael Cooper, Robert Hooke and the rebuilding of London (Sutton, 2003); also published as A More beautiful city: Robert Hooke and the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. Text available on loan
  • Ellen Tan Drake, Restless genius: Robert Hooke and his Earthly thoughts (Oxford UP, 1996). Text available on loan
  • Lisa Jardine, The Curious life of Robert Hooke (HarperCollins, 2003). Text available on loan

See also the Biography.

 
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Bibliotheca Hookiana title page

Title page of Bibliotheca Hookiana, the auction catalogue prepared after Hooke's death (Image 1)

Micrographia title page

Title page of Micrographia, 1665 (Image 2)

Posthumous works by Waller

Title page of Hooke's Posthumous works, 1705, edited by Richard Waller (Image 3)


References

  1. Purrington (2006): Robert D. Purrington, 'After the Principia', in Robert Hooke: tercentennial studies, edited by Michael Cooper and Michael Hunter (Routledge, 2016), footnote 3, p.320.

 
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Image acknowledgments

So far as we know, all of the images reproduced on this page are in the public domain. We shall immediately take down on demand any that are still in copyright.

  1. Title page of Bibliotheca Hookiana. Image © Rare Book Hub.
  2. Title page of Micrographia. Image © Wellcome Trust, reproduced under this licence.
  3. Title page of The posthumous works of Robert Hooke ... containing his Cutlerian lectures, and other discourses, read at the meetings of the illustrious Royal Society ..., edited by Richard Waller. Image © Wellcome Trust, reproduced under this licence.

 
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Page last amended 15th January 2025