Footnotes

'I STARTED THE PROCURING CUTTS TO HIS HISTORY OF PLANTS': THE PUBLISHING HISTORY OF JOHN RAY'S OPUS MAGNUM. John Ray's History of Plants, considered by Keynes to be his greatest work, was published in three parts in 1686, 1688 and 1701, all without illustrations. It had been Ray's intention – as our letter makes clear – to illustrate the work, which would have certainly helped sales. But he was averse to using old-fashioned woodcuts and the cost of engraving adequate plates proved prohibitive: according to our letter, Ray costed them at a staggering £7000. The suggestion, again as recorded in the present letter, that the History be an ongoing work (along the lines perhaps of Curtis) is particularly intriguing. In the event, a series of plates for the History was to be issued by Ray's assistant James Petiver, as A Catalogue of Mr Ray's English Herbal Illustrated with Figures between c.1715 and 1764. Derham's long-contemplated biography of Ray (as also discussed in our letter) was to be published only after his death as The Select Remains of the Learned John Ray (1760), edited by his nephew-in-law George Scott FRS.

The author of this letter, Dr Benjamin Allen (1663-1738) of Braintree, Essex, had been a friend and correspondent of Ray's; his first paper On the Manner of Generation of Eels being published by the Royal Society in 1698. The letter originally formed part of the William Derham's archive that comprised the papers of Robert Hooke (including his minutes of the Royal Society now at the Royal Society and his Diary now at the Guildhall) as well as the papers of John Ray, the latter assembled in Derham's capacity as Ray's executor and biographer. At Derham's death they were inherited by his son, also called William, who, being childless, left them to his mother; she bequeathing them to her nephew, George Scott of Woolston Hall. It appears that the archive survived until near the end of the nineteenth century with the family at Woolston Hall and nearby Moor Hall (for a full discussion of provenance, see our catalogue of the Hooke Folio, 28 March 2006, lot 189, pp. 20-21). A further group of Derham's Ray papers, acquired at auction in the late nineteenth century, was sold in these rooms, in the Enys Sale, 28 September 2004, lots 294-307, another group with the Hooke Folio, 28 March 2006, lots 184-188, and a further manuscript from the Enys group on 28 March 2006, lot 119. Allen's own papers are at the Royal College of Surgeons.