Book Review: Higitt on Dry, The Newton Papers
Sarah Dry. The Newton Papers: The Strange
and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton's Manuscripts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 256 pp. $29.95
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-995104-8.
Reviewed by Rebekah Higgitt (University of
Kent)
Published on H-Albion (October, 2014)
Commissioned by Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth
Published on H-Albion (October, 2014)
Commissioned by Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth
Aimed at a wider audience than just academics, The Newton
Papers tells the story of Isaac Newton’s archive from the time of his
death to the present day. Drawing on existing scholarship, it is a story well
worth sharing with anyone interested in Newton and how we have, over three
hundred years, come to know him and shaped his legacy. Sarah Dry has a colorful
and intriguing cast of characters on which to draw, who represent a
surprisingly varied set of motives for engaging with Newton’s life and literary
remains. They include, naturally, the Cambridge heirs of Newtonian mathematical
physics, like George Stokes, but also bibliophiles and collectors, like
J. M. Keynes, and the philologist and biblical scholar Abraham Yahuda. In
general, Dry handles these multiple strands with confidence. We see how each
found in Newton a reflection of their own interests: his legacy has been a
resource for, variously, supporters of both the particle and wave theories of
light (David Brewster and Jean-Baptiste Biot); investors inspired by physical
laws to believe they could predict the rise and fall of prices (Roger Babson);
those seeking deeper sources of unified intellectual endeavour (Yahuda); and
professional historians of science.