The letterbooks kept by the Royal Society from its inception have been much studied by scholars and substantial selections have appeared in edited collections. The majority of this work has concentrated on celebrated individuals, such as Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle and Henry Oldenburg, the society's first secretary. The purpose of the Early Letters project is to treat the contents of the letterbooks as a collection that informs us not merely about the work of distinguished individuals, but about the Royal Society as an institution, the diversity of its membership, its relationship to other institutions and the wider context within which scientific research was conducted in seventeenth and eighteenth century Britain.