How did they survive? Are they complete?Although a considerable number of workdiaries survive, it is clear that others are no longer extant: for instance, there is a noticeable gap in the series from 1657 to 1662 (see Hunter and Littleton (2001), p. 376). Boyle's papers suffered various vicissitudes after his death in 1691, during which some workdiaries were lost while one (Workdiary 26) was separated from the main group, ending up among the papers of Boyle's biographer, Thomas Birch, now in the British Library. The Boyle Papers were presented to the Royal Society by the widow of Birch's collaborator, Henry Miles, in 1769, and they were bound up in their present arrangement in the 1850s. This owes virtually nothing to Boyle and little to logic, and the workdiaries are scattered in an almost random way within the archive. Partly because of this, they have hitherto been virtually unknown. |
