Linnaean Correspondence

Founded in 1788, The Linnean Society of London is the world’s oldest active biological society. It is named after the great Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), whose botanical, zoological and library collections have been in its keeping since 1829.  The Linnaean Collections were bought from Linnaeus’ widow by Sir James Edward Smith, founder and first President of the Linnean Society, in 1829 and brought to London.  They included a large number of letters sent to Linnaeus, whose reputation was such that many of the major figures in eighteenth century science were corresponding with him – some to seek advice, some to exchange plant specimens, some to send him copies of their own works for comment, some to criticise his work and some to eulogise. These letters are now available for all to read on-line: 

The Linnaean Correspondence Online 

The collection held by the Linnean Society contains over 4,000 letters from 600 different correspondents including letters from such major figures as Sir Joseph Banks, Johan Frederik Gronovius,  Johan Christian Fabricius, the Jussieu brothers, José Celestino Mútis, Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Georg Dionysius Ehret, Anders Celsius, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and even Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see Rousseau letter L4545). The majority of the letters are written in Latin, the lingua franca of the scientific world at the time.

The earliest letters date from the 1730s, when Linnaeus was still a relatively young man, and continue up to his death in 1778 and beyond, as it took time for news of his demise to reach more distant correspondents. They include letters from a Scottish bookseller, John Balfour in 1762 (see L3109);  ordering copies of books by Linnaeus, from Anna Blackburne, a keen English woman botanist telling him that “there are many Ladies in this country that are very fond of plants…” (see L 4561, of 14 October 1771); from Cadwallader Colden, Governor of New York (see L1015, written in February 1749) in which he complains that  plants he sent have been captured by the French and asks mail to be sent via “Mr Benjn. Franklin, postmaster at Philadephia”; from Nicolaas Laurens Burman sent from Holland in August 1761, where page 4 has a collection of small plant specimens in a packet, some of which still retain their colour (see L2940).

Plants are not the only enclosures and a letter from Antoine Gouan in Montpellier, dated 12 April 1762, has a small dried fish specimen on page 4 and a drawing for the same fish on page 5 (see L3058); John Miller, writing from London in April 1773 accompanies his letter with two detailed drawings of plants (see L4828). 

Transcriptions and summaries are already available for some letters so there is no need to read the Latin to understand what Gronovius is writing about in September 1735 (see L0044).

J. E. Smith published a selection of the letters, giving translations of Swedish and Latin where necessary (see Smith. J.E., A selection of the correspondence of Linnaeus and other naturalists from the original manuscripts. 2 vols. London: Longman, 1821). Scans of these and other published versions, accompany some letters. So although the original letter from Herman Boerhaave, written on 13 January 1737, can now be seen (L0136), it is in Latin. The English translation published by Smith is also there making it a quick task to check its content. There is also a full Latin transcription, a summary of its contents, an image from another published version and a citation for a recent edition of Boerhaave’s letters.  

Importance of the letters

The letters are an invaluable source of information for interpreting other parts of the collections.  Most of the Linnaean specimens have no details attached as to where and when they were collected and by whom, but this vital information can often be gleaned by careful study of the correspondence. In addition to the wealth of scientific information contained within the correspondence, it is also a rich source for those interested in wider historical and social matters.  The correspondents often comment upon political situations, mentioning difficulties in travelling and getting letters through as various European wars rage and commiserating on the foundering of ships carrying precious cargoes of plant specimens.

Even the paper on which the letters are written can often tell a tale.  Some of the letters were sent from cities beset with plague and we can see how the paper has been perforated to allow fumigation to take place in an attempt to halt the spread of the disease. They also include seals and franks which document their postal history.

The online Linnaean Correspondence project

http://linnaeus.c18.net/

This was conceived by the late Tomas Anfält as a way of making all Linnaean letters accessible worldwide by the time of the 2007 Tercentenary of Linnaeus’ birth.  The project functions under the aegis of the Swedish Linnaean Society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Uppsala University and its library, and the Linnean Society of London, with the collaboration of the Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle.

The images are now accessible on the Linnaeus Correspondence website: http://linnaeus.c18.net  This includes a full catalogue of all the letters, with biographical, bibliographical and other resource such as  summaries and scanned images of printed texts.  This part of the project has been financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond).

Images of all the Society’s holdings of these letters are available via the above site and will be made available through the Linnean Society’s website later in the year.  The Society owes a great debt of gratitude to the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund which helped the Society fund the necessary conservation and digitisation programme.

The Linnean Society has managed a three-part programme of conservation, digitisation and on-line availability. Download poster of project.

• Conservation. In Victorian times the letters were transferred into 17 large albums.   These unwieldy volumes, with acidic mounting paper, were difficult to handle and lead to a risk of damage to the letters and their many enclosures, such a specimens or drawings. It was decided that the letters needed to be removed from the albums, conserved and re-mounted on acid-free paper.

This part of the project was undertaken by the expert team at the Paper Conservation Department of Dundee University Library and was completed in August 2006. As most letters are more than one page, they had over 8,000 sheets of paper to repair. The letters are now mounted in smaller fascicules, which are housed in special Solander  boxes in the Linnaean Collections Store. Library and Conservation staff within the Linnean Society worked closely with the Dundee team to provide the best solutions to problems of storage, accessibility and requirements for scanning.

• Digitisation. Once conserved, the letters were in perfect condition to be digitised.  This part of the project started at the beginning of 2006 and was completed in December 2006.  It was undertaken by Capita Micromedia Solutions and has resulted in 16,500 images now available to be read online.

• On-line availability. The benefits of having the correspondence available online include:
  • Instant access.  Scholars will no longer need to travel to the Society in order to study the letters.
  • Legibility.  The zoom function on the digitised images enables them to be enlarged to make for much greater legibility.
  • Conservation.  On-line availability will mean that access to the actual letters can be kept to a minimum, thus ensuring that they can be stored in optimum conditions for posterity.
  • Added value.  The links to biographical, bibliographical and printed sources, with English summaries of the many letters in Latin and other languages provide a valuable research tool.

To access the letters

• To access the letters go to the web site and choose "Letters" to go to the full list.
• Then choose document type, the author of the letter and  the recipient. You will get a list with a number for each letter. This is the code assigned to each individual letter, each begins with an “L”. 
• Click on the number for the one you want and a pop up screen will give you more details. Where there is a (+) sign you can get more information by clicking on that.
• The images of the letters are in “Manuscripts” and published editions in “Editions”: click on the page numbers for those  and you will see the letter. These can be magnified, saved and  printed if required. Other options are  available on the opening screen or on the left of the screen.