• 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?

When were they written?

The workdiaries were written over a period of 45 years, from 1647 to 1691. They therefore span Boyle's career as a writer, the earliest surviving from when Boyle was twenty years old, the last from the year in which he died.