Roger Gaskell is a retired antiquarian bookseller, having dealt in natural history, scientific and medical books, first at Quaritch’s, then Pickering and Chatto in London. He set up his own business in 1989 working closely with academic libraries in the UK and US. While at Pickering and Chatto he was responsible for setting up Pickering and Chatto Publishers and commissioned Michael Hunter to edit the Works and Correspondence of Robert Boyle.
He now researches, teaches and publishes on historical print making processes and the history of scientific illustration. He has taught classes in London, Cambridge, Oxford, Berlin and Charlottesville, where he is a faculty member of Rare Book School, University of Virginia.
‘A peculiar facility of imagining: Robert Hooke’s Micrographia in context’, May 2024
This lecture will consider Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) in the context of other books published under the auspices of scientific societies around the same time. Robert Boyle’s New experiments in its first edition (1660) depended on its readers ability to form mental pictures and conduct thought experiments, but Boyle was persuaded by Hooke and others to include illustrations of his experiments in the sequel (1669). In contrast, Hooke was already overseeing the production of engravings ahead of the publication of Micrographia. While the subject matter of the Micrographia more obviously requires illustrations, it was not dissimilar to Boyle’s work its literary technology. I will argue that Hooke’s visual imagination was a key factor in the form and function of his images within the materiality of the printed book. Making the printed book the focus of attention, I will also show that the way images are used and presented depends as much on the circumstances of production as on the author’s scientific message. The Micrographia carried the imprimatur of the Royal Society but it was a commercial production, without financial support. In contrast, publications of members of Académie Royale des Science in Paris and the Accademia del Cimento in Florence were vanity publications, fully funded and not sold in the bookshops. I will consider how their meaning changed when translated by fellows of the Royal Society and put on sale in London.
