• Who was Robert Boyle?
• What are the 'workdiaries'?
• When were they written?
• How did Boyle use them?
• Did their content vary over time?
• What do the workdiaries look like?
• Whose handwriting appears in the workdiaries?
• How did they survive? Are they complete?
• What condition are the workdiares in?

Whose handwriting appears in the workdiaries?

The chief handwritings that appear in the workdiaries are as follows:

• Boyle. The workdiaries are written in Boyle's own hand until the mid-1650s, when he started to use amanuenses. Thereafter, many endorsements or insertions are in his hand, as are occasional entries. In later years, Boyle's hand deteriorated and became less distinct.
• Anonymous hands. Various scribes who worked for Boyle had distinctive hands which have been denoted by a letter, since the scribes in question have not been identified. There are three chronological groups of these. One, comprising hands P and the '1650s hand' , dates from the late 1650s. The second, comprising hands E, F, G, H, J, K, Q, and R, dates from between c. 1660 and c.1670, and most of these hands are not found after 1668, when Boyle moved from Oxford to London. A third group, comprising hands B and C, can be dated to the years around 1680 (see Hunter (1992), pp. xxxvi-viii; Hunter and Davis (1999-2000), I, pp. c-ci.)
• Identifiable amanuenses. From c. 1670 onwards, a number of Boyle's scribes can be identified by name: Robin Bacon, Hugh Greg, Frederick Slare, Thomas Smith and John Warr (see Hunter (1992), pp. xxxi-v).