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Taking Newton On Tour

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This volume provides a critical edition of an exceptional example of the 'Scientific Grand Tour' taken by Martin Folkes. Martin Folkes (1690-1754) was Newton's protégé, antiquary, mathematician, an...
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  • 14 October 2025
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This volume provides a critical edition of an exceptional example of the 'Scientific Grand Tour' taken by Martin Folkes. Martin Folkes (1690-1754) was Newton's protégé, antiquary, mathematician, and the only simultaneous president of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries. In 1733-5, he went on Grand Tour as a scientific ambassador for the Royal Society, demonstrating Newtonian optics to Italian virtuosi. He also measured ancient and Renaissance buildings to understand past architectural engineering and design. His 97-page illustrated diary (in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, shelfmark MS Eng. misc.c.444) also challenges the long-standing, mistaken impression among scholars that the Royal Society was in decline in the eighteenth century. Analysing Folkes's activities abroad and creating an edition from this source tracing his Italian route provides a novel reading of Newtonianism and the purpose of the Grand Tour as a vehicle for scientific research and statesmanship.
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Price: $195.00
Pages: 296
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Hakluyt Society
Series: Hakluyt Society Third Series
Publication Date: 14 October 2025
Trim Size: 9.61 X 6.77 in
ISBN: 9781916931190
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: HISTORY / Military / Naval, SCIENCE / History, History and Archaeology, History of science, History of art
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CONTENTS
List of Maps and Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION
1. Introduction and Provenance of the Diary
2. The Historiography of Folkes's Tour
3. Taking Newton on Tour
4. Cartography, Metrology and Antiquarian Science
5. Rome
6. Afterword: A Wife and a Life: Folkes's Tour and Lucretia Bradshaw
7. Editorial Conventions

THE TRAVEL DIARY OF MARTIN FOLKES 1

APPENDICES
A. Martin Folkes's Itinerary
B. Venetian Coinage, 1700-1800

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX