Chapter 4 Women reading science and philosophy: medical, culinary and philosophical knowledge

Her philosophy: ownership and annotation

Scientific texts were frequently present in book lists and inventories, showing that women were not concealing their reading. Perhaps one of the most famous records of female book ownership, Lady Anne Clifford’s Great Picture contains depictions of books such as Gerard’s Herbal, as well as a manuscript volume of ‘Alchemist Extractions, of Distillations and excellent Medicines’ compiled by Lady Margaret Clifford, Anne’s mother.¹⁹ This was not unusual: as mentioned earlier, the majority of seventeenth-century book lists focus on religious or devotional texts, but books such as herbals or medicinal tracts frequently appear.²⁰ In the catalogue made of Lady Margaret Heath’s library (which we briefly examined in Chapter 1), there are several medical works listed, including ‘Gerards Herball in fol. uncolourd’, ‘Gerards Herball in fol. coloured’, ‘Woodhalls Chirurgery fol.’ and ‘Wirtsungs practise of phisick fol.’.²¹ Gerard’s Herbal was an extremely popular book that was often found in women’s book lists, although the fact that Heath owned two copies, ‘coloured’ and ‘uncolour’d’, is notable. ‘Wirtsungs practise of Phisick’ was The General Practice of Physick, a translation of a text written by German physician Christoph Wirsung.²² The final title is perhaps more unusual. ‘Woodhalls Chirurgery’ is probably a book by John Woodall, who was appointed the first surgeon-general of the East India Company in 1613.²³ Woodall published The Surgions Mate, or A Treatise discovering faithfully and plainely the due contents of the Surgions chest in 1617, a text that was chiefly aimed at sea surgeons and which reflected Woodall’s interest in Paracelsian iatrochemistry.²⁴ This appears to have much less relevance to Heath’s everyday life than Gerard’s Herbal, indicating that she may have had an interest in surgical method or in Woodall’s Paracelsian ideas. It has been recognised that women often had an interest in Paracelsian concepts and alchemy more generally, particularly its ideas about medicine and pharmacology.²⁵ Alternatively, she may have been given the book or kept it for some reason unrelated to the actual contents; it is very difficult to know the motivations behind book lists, but Heath’s ownership of this text does suggest that some women interacted with scientific books that did not have any immediate ‘use’.

The inventory of Elizabeth Sleigh’s books, also made in 1647, similarly contains a copy of The General Practice of Physick, although this one is listed under the name of the translator ‘Dr Mosan’ (Jacob Mosan). Sleigh’s inventory also includes ‘Gwillimeau^s Childbirth, 4^to’, which refers to Jacques Guillemeau’s Child-birth or, The Happy Delivery of Women.²⁶ Elizabeth Freke’s book list, created in 1705, includes ‘i book of cirgiary by Colebach’, ‘i Compleatt Herball by Peachy’, ‘2 new books of Cullpepers phisick’ and ‘i book of the Family Phisition’.²⁷ She also added ‘i abstractt of Gerralds herbal of my wrightine now in the great black trunke’, indicating that she also made her own copies or summaries of texts and included them with the rest of her printed books. Some women, however, also read more esoteric scientific works. Heath owned a copy of ‘Bacons naturall History’ in folio. Freke also included ‘i abstract of P Helins geography, quarto’ in her inventory. This was probably Peter Heylyn’s Cosmographie, which had been through seven editions by 1703.²⁸ This is not necessarily something that would be seen as unusual for women, at least not educated, wealthy women; as mentioned at the start of this chapter, a rounded education in science and philosophy was seen as part of an effort to understand God’s works.

There is evidence of women reading or owning scientific texts from inscriptions and marginalia, although again admittedly this is nowhere near as common as religious texts. Nevertheless, there are some good examples of ownership inscriptions. Many of these come without other, more extensive annotations, but there is still an ownership claim at work. A copy of James Hodder’s Arithemetick, for example, held in the Beinecke Library, bears the signature of ‘Miss Elizabeth Bantoft her booke 1668’ on the front flyleaf.²⁹ Bantoft also left a more embellished signature on the following page, with artistic details on the letters, reading, ‘Miss Elisab. Bantoft Oct.19.68’. This may have just been a pen trial, but the ‘her booke’ and the dates on both inscriptions suggest she was making a claim to owning the book itself. Hodder’s Arithemetick was a very popular text, aimed at introducing readers to mathematics (James Hodder was a mathematician and school teacher).³⁰ Bantoft then was perhaps interested in furthering her education, or using the book as a reference text – although this is just speculation, as without any further annotations it is hard to tell the extent of her interaction with the text.

The Beinecke also holds a copy of Robert Fage’s Cosmography, signed on the inside front cover ‘Ann Avery her Book 1678’, but similarly lacking in any other signs of use.³¹ An edition of Philip Barrough’s The Method of Phisicke in the Huntington Library is the same; it is signed on the title page ‘The Lady Bacons booke’ but otherwise unannotated.³² The Wellcome Library’s copy of Jane Sharp’s The Midwives Book has been signed by two women in the same family, in what look like late seventeenth-century hands: one of the front flyleaves bears the signature ‘Mary Rowe’ with what looks like ‘her Book’ (although this has been damaged and is not fully legible), while one of the back flyleaves reads ‘Abigall Rowe her Book and hand’.³³ This may have been a competing ownership claim or the book may have passed from one woman to another, either as part of inheritance or as a gift. Unfortunately, there are no other details to explain these women’s relationship or the extent to which they interacted with the book.

However, certain readers did provide more extensive annotations on their works. This is unusual but invaluable in determining how individual women read their philosophical and scientific works. Mary Astell, who was such a strong proponent of women’s education, left a remarkable collection of annotations on her books. Astell’s library has recently been uncovered at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and reveals a great deal about her reading habits.³⁴ She read many texts that were philosophical or scientific in nature, principally from French thinkers such as René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche. Astell annotated her books to varying extents, but a few texts in her collection bear extensive and highly revealing annotations. Astell is often called a Cartesian and the influence of Descartes can certainly be seen in her library, which contains many of his publications.³⁵ However, as Jacqueline Broad has pointed out, she was also influenced by the ‘Neoplatonist and Augustinian principles at work in the philosophies of Nicolas Malebranche and John Norris’, and was not afraid to read works that disagreed with Cartesian principles.³⁶ Astell’s library and indeed her annotations on her books attest to her broad philosophical interests and influences, and her sense of her place in the intellectual culture of the time.

Astell’s reading notes represent her as a reader who was fully participating in the debates and discussions within her books. She constructed an image of a reader who made every effort to understand the nuances of the ideas in the text, cross-referencing and creating systems to parse the text. She is the perfect example of an active and extensive reader, in the scholarly sense of the terms, even working to ensure that she checked the most recent or ‘best’ editions to be as well informed as possible. This all worked to justify her participation in the intellectual network of philosophers that she was reading – she was an active participant in the debates. Her copy of Descartes’ Les Principes de la Philosophie is the most heavily annotated in the Magdalene collection. It shows the extent to which she used manuscript notes to structure and understand her reading. The text itself is in French, which Astell learnt as an adult, and her annotations are in a mix of French and English. Astell frequently cross-referenced other texts in her annotations, showing the breadth of her reading and her efforts to understand certain topics. For example, she added a lengthy marginal annotation to her copy of Descartes’ Principes, which reads:

Plato whom y^e Antients say follow’d Heraclitus in Physic’s taught, que nos sens sont fort sujets à se tromper, & qu’il n’y a point dans leur deposition de verité seure. La Vie de Plato par Dacier p.76. He believ’d there was but one world; y^t all things were produc’d by their contrarys; yt Beings were produc’d by Motion, wch he calls war, & yt there dissolution was from Rest Ibid La vüë & l’oüye ont ells quelque sorte de verité, & leur deposition est elle fidelle ou le Poëtes ont ils raison de nous chanter que nous n’entendons ni ne voyons rien veritablem^t. & so says Socrates in Phado p.174 & adds yt if these two senses are neither true nor sure, y^e other y^t are more feeble must needs be less so.³⁷

The printed passage it corresponds to is marked with an ‘(a)’ and is about the senses and how they can be mistaken. Here Astell explicitly mentions two texts, even providing page numbers. The La Vie de Plato she mentions was by André Dacier, the French classicist and translator.³⁸ There is no evidence of Dacier’s text in Astell’s library at Magdalene, but that does not mean she did not own it; she may also have borrowed the text. The French portion of the annotation was copied directly from Dacier’s Les Oeuvres de Platon, for which the page reference is correct, but Astell also summarised some of the previous page by mentioning Plato following Heraclitus.³⁹ We know from a note on the upper pastedown that Astell had used the Descartes text in some way in July 1695 (whether this was the date of purchase, of reading or of annotating is unclear); Dacier’s text had been published the previous year, so she was drawing on very up-to-date works in her reading notes.

The second reference she included was also to Dacier’s Platon, this time the second volume, in which he has translated the Phaedo.⁴⁰ Again, the French passage is copied directly from Dacier, but this time Astell added a brief translation in her own words, summarising the rest of Socrates’ speech. It seems that she must have been reading the Descartes text with Dacier’s Platon to hand: as the translations are so exact, she must have copied them directly from the text. This is clearly evidence of extensive reading and reading to better understand an issue – Astell was drawing on multiple texts to consider the concept of the senses. She may have had several reasons for writing this down, but it was in all likelihood part of her intellectual process. The marginal notes may have served as a way of thinking through the issues, or may have been intended to help her remember the links she had made at a future date (or both).

There is evidence of Astell reading complementary texts in tandem in order to better understand the ideas. Dacier’s Platon was clearly an important text to Astell. Intriguingly, she wrote a very similar note to the one above on another book in her collection. On her copy of the first volume of Nicolas Malebranche’s De la Recherche de la Verité, she wrote, ‘Plato taught que nos sens sont fort sujets à se tromper, & qu’il n’y a point dans leur deposition de verité seure en sa vie p76’ below ‘Chapitre VI’.⁴¹ The chapter itself is about sight and how we can be deceived by our eyes. Astell shortened her annotation from Descartes, but the quote from Dacier is word for word the same as in the other annotation. This appears to suggest that she was reading with a purpose: she was interested in gathering knowledge about the senses and built up that knowledge by cross-referencing several texts.

Astell’s commitment to Cartesian ideas is demonstrable in many of her references to other texts. In her copy of the second volume of Malebranche’s De La Recherche de la Verité, at the end of the table of ‘éclairissements’ (explanations or glossary), she wrote:

That Beasts are only machines was Maintain’d by a Spanish Physician Gomesius Pareira who publish’d it at Medina del Campo 1554 in a book yt cost him 30 years labour, call’d Antoniana Margarita, He liv’d in y^e 1500 not in y^e 1200 contrary as l’Abbe Gerard in his Philosophie des Gens de Cour would have it. See La Bête transformée en Machine par J Darmanson 12 1684.⁴²

Astell here was engaging with the beast–machine controversy; over whether animals had souls or were simply automata, as proposed by Descartes in his Discourse on the Method in 1637.⁴³ Malebranche was also an animal automatist and Recherche de la Verité argued that God provided the intelligence displayed in animals.⁴⁴ The Spanish physician is Gómez Pereira, whose work on the nature of animals as machines preceded Descartes by many years.⁴⁵ Descartes supposedly denied any familiarity with Pereira’s work.⁴⁶ Astell appears to be advocating for Pereira’s influence, but her broad knowledge of the ideas relevant to Cartesian philosophy comes across clearly; she evidently read very widely and was highly knowledgeable about the development of such ideas. Her particular interest in animal automatism – something which occupied not only Descartes and Malebranche but also John Norris, whose influence on Astell is well documented – is clear from this note, if not from other annotations; she evidently read in depth on the development of the theory.⁴⁷

There is more evidence of Astell’s extensive reading habits at the end of her copy of Descartes’ Principes. On the lower pastedown, for example, she wrote:

According to M. Halley in Philers.Trans. Sept or Oct 1688 by an experim^t mention’d there in 24 hours 6 ounces of water evaporated from a surface of 8 Inches Diameter, & thence he concludes yt 60 square Inches surface furnish in vapours a Cubic Inch of Water. Each square foot half a pint four sq feet a Gallon. A Mile square 6914 Tun, a Degree sq (viz. 69 Miles sq) exhales 33 Millions of Tuns.⁴⁸

She was referring to an article by Edmund Halley in an edition of Philosophical Transactions, the journal of the Royal Society. The article was about gravity, something Astell had made lengthy notes on earlier in her Descartes text. Together with Descartes’ text, Astell had bound a series of plates (which were often sold separately by booksellers) and many blank pages which she covered with her own copious notes. These relate to various scientific ideas expounded in the text, such as the laws of motion, and there is a long section on gravity.

The fact that she linked to Halley in particular, however, shows another facet of her reading; that she was willing to engage in debates and challenge Cartesian ideas. In the article, Halley quite explicitly criticised Descartes’ Principes, writing:

Des Cartes his Notion, I must needs confess to be to me Incomprehensible, while he will have the Particles of his Celestial Matter, by being reflected on the Surface of the Earth, and so ascending therefrom, to drive down into their places those Terrestrial Bodies they find above them: This is as near as I can gather the scope of the 20, 21, 22 and 23 Sections of the last Book of his Principia Philosophiae; yet neither he, nor any of his Followers can shew how a body suspended in libero aethere, shall be carried downwards by a continual Impulse tending upwards, and acting upon all its parts equally: And besides the obscurity wherewith he expresses himself particularly, Sect. 23 does sufficiently argue according to his own Rules, the confused Idea he had of the thing himself.⁴⁹

Astell did not address this criticism; however, the fact that she included a mention of Halley, and particularly an article in which he was so scathing of Cartesian ideas, shows her wide reading. She was evidently willing to read across the philosophical barricades; she did not only read texts that agreed with one another but drew from texts that explicitly disagreed in order to form her own views.

All of the examples above do not show any explicit reference to the links between the texts; rather, we are left to infer them from the placement of the annotation and similarities between the subjects. However, there is one example from Astell’s library where she quite clearly made a comparison between two authors. On the upper endpaper of Astell’s copy of Malebranche’s Meditations Chrestiennes, she wrote a note about the work of Sir Francis Bacon:

so much is the mind of Man dispos’d to love order, y^t my Ld Bacon reckons it among his Idola tribus, “y^t y^e intellect of man has an innate propensity to suppose in things a greater order & equality yⁿ it finds (another of y^m is “y^t being unable to rest or acquiesce it does always tend further & further) apud y^e Reconcile: of Reas. & Relig. P30 How well does y^s agree w^th Maleb.⁵⁰

Astell was suggesting that Malebranche and Bacon would agree, making links between the two philosophers. Bacon coined the term Idola Tribus (Idols of the Tribe) in his Novum Organum to describe the idea that humans are often drawn to certain incorrect conclusions about the world. Astell made a very valid link between the two philosophers; they shared ideas about the importance of logic, and Malebranche was influenced by Bacon.⁵¹ Astell was clearly thinking carefully about the ideas presented by various philosophers regarding the human mind and paying attention to the similarities between them.

However, in her annotation Astell was actually quoting from a text written by Sir Robert Boyle, Some Considerations about the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion. Boyle mentions the ideas of ‘Verulam’; Bacon was granted a peerage as the Baron of Verulam. Astell quoted directly from Boyle, but she broke the quote up. Boyle’s text reads, ‘As that the Intellect of Man has an innate Propensity to suppose in things a greater order and equality than it finds, and that being unable to rest or acquiesce, it does alwayes tend further and further’, whereas Astell put the second half of this passage in brackets, presenting it as a quote taken from a different section of the book.⁵² The fact that she quoted this way, rather than drawing directly on any of Bacon’s published writings, indicates that perhaps she did not have them to hand; she may not have read or owned any of Bacon’s works (he does not appear in the library she left to Magdalene College).

Astell was also very concerned that she acquired the best edition of her books in order to further her understanding even more. In a number of her texts she wrote notes about different editions, usually on or near the title page. On the title page of Descartes’ Les Meditations Metaphysiques, she wrote, ‘Y^e first Edit. was at Paris 1641 y^s being y^e 2^d work he publish’d y^e first having for Title Discours de la Methode pour bien conduire sa raison, chercher la verite dan les sciences. Plus la Dioptrique les Meteores & la Geometrie qui sont des essais de cette methode A Leyde, publish’d June 8 1637.’⁵³ This refers to Descartes’ Discourse on the Method, originally published in Leiden, alongside essays about the nature of light (‘la Dioptrique’) and geometry. Astell clearly had a good understanding of Descartes’ whole oeuvre, including when each of his texts were published, despite the fact that not all of his works are included in her library. Her note contextualised the book within Descartes’ other publications, paying attention to the paratextuality of his work. She also added a note about the translation, writing at the bottom of the title page, ‘The Duke De Luines translated the Meditations & Mr Clersehier ye Answers & Objections’, giving some provenance for the text.

There is an even longer note about editions in Astell’s copy of Malebranche’s Recherche de la Verité, this time on the verso of the title page:

This Book was first Printed at Paris 1677 The best edition is the 5^th Paris chez Michel David 1700. In wch one many alterations & additions as I have here inserted ym besides new illustrations. The Author in an Advertismt tells il y a plus de vingt-cinq ans que cette ouvrage est compose, & how this agrees wth ye Letters Patents before this Edit. In 1700 dated March 27 1677. The Author tells us ye best editions of his works are as follows 1 Conversations Chretiennes, Rouen, 1695 2 Traite de la nature & de la Grace Rotterdam chez R Leers 3 Traite de morale Lyon 1697 4 Meditationes Chretiennes Lyon 1699 5 Responses a M Arnaud Rotterdam six little volumes in different years 6 Entretiens sur la Metaphysiques & sur la Religion Paris 1696 7 Traite de l’Amour de Dieu & la Suite Paris 1699 & he would have ym read in this order.⁵⁴

This passage has several important points. Astell noted that she took ‘additions’ and ‘alterations’ from the ‘best edition’ of Recherche and added them into her copy, demonstrating her desire to get the best from her text and reflect the most up-to-date version of Malebranche’s ideas. This implies she had perhaps borrowed the edition from 1700, perhaps from a friend or acquaintance; if she owned it, there would be little point in making the alterations to her 1677 copy. She was also obviously interested in Malebranche’s editorial comments and his concept of his own oeuvre, as she made a note of his rankings of his own books.

Astell made the effort to acquire these ‘best editions’ of Malebranche’s works, or at least to remind herself of which were the superior copies. She owned the copy of Traité de la Nature et de la Grace printed ‘chez Rainier Leers’ and noted on the title page that ‘y^s is y^e best edition, according to y^e Author in his Advertisement to his search after Truth (5^th Edit. Paris 1700 w^ch is y^e best)’ (referring back to the 1700 edition of Recherche).⁵⁵ In her copy of Traité de Morale, she wrote ‘Lyon 1997’ on the title page – this was not that edition, but clearly she wanted to remind herself which one was the best.⁵⁶ Similarly, on her copy of Malebranche’s Meditations Chrestiennes, she wrote at the bottom of the title page: ‘best Lyons 1699 Responses a M Arnaud a Rotterdam 6 little volumes in different years’, quite clearly harking back to the note on Recherche.⁵⁷

Astell’s concern for the best editions of her scientific works shows her intellectual rigour; with both Descartes and Malebranche she was clearly interested in the author’s work as a whole, and made an effort to think about their conception of their publications as well as to contextualise them. This all added to her reading; she was trying to aim for the best reading experience possible by selecting the ‘right’ editions or making alterations to her own copies to reflect the most up-to-date version of the author’s ideas. She was also situating herself within a network of philosophers, adding her own voice to their debates and theories. All of Astell’s annotations show her playing an authoritative, interpretative role as a reader. She did not attempt to argue with or contradict the authors she was reading, but she did signal her own intellectual authority by making links between different theories and texts. She did not show any sense of submitting to the authority of the author; instead, her annotations imply that she was on the same intellectual level, as she added to and contextualised their ideas. The texts she owned show her intellectual priorities; the collection at Magdalene College gives a clear indication of her preference for Descartes and Malebranche, and she was evidently a very dedicated reader.

Knowledge, science and manuscript recipe books

Alongside the evidence of women’s ownership of printed scientific texts, we can learn a great deal about their interaction with scientific ideas through their manuscript books, in particular recipe books. These were extremely common in the seventeenth century, owned and compiled by both men and women. There has been a lot of scholarship on recipe books in recent years, led by historians such as Sara Pennell, Amanda Herbert and Elaine Leong. Many of the recent conversations in this scholarship have revolved around questions of knowledge, authority and female self-representation. They were records of various aspects of the compiler’s life and social interactions, as seen through the attributions and markers of social relationships that litter early modern manuscript recipe books.⁵⁸ They are therefore a valuable insight into women’s conceptions of their own sociable identities. Moreover, Wendy Wall has argued that there was an intellectual authority displayed in recipe books, often overlooked due to their designation as part of domestic culture. She has suggested that recipes allowed people to interact with philosophical questions and humanist thought, as they ‘asked readers outside formal sites of education to reflect on how something called “nature” was to be positioned in relation to the artifactual; they demanded that practitioners think about how and when to put natural materials in and out of time and how to evidence “truth”’.⁵⁹ Recipe books are therefore a particularly useful way of understanding women’s knowledge; we can see the scientific ideas that they were using and absorbing, often through reading practices, and the ways in which they used these ideas to position themselves as intellectual authorities within particular social networks.

Recipe books can and should be considered examples of early modern science and knowledge production. As Elaine Leong has argued, ‘household recipe books record not only how householders produced a range of foods and medicines, but also how they investigated and used natural materials and production techniques, how they understood and looked after their bodies in sickness and in health, and how they positioned themselves within their natural environment’.⁶⁰ Leong calls recipe books examples of ‘household science’ and situates them at the centre of everyday knowledge production, demonstrating how people understood not just scientific processes but also social relationships and household management.⁶¹

This is how I will consider recipe books: as evidence of scientific and domestic knowledge production. However, I am going to particularly think about the readers of recipe books; a lot of work so far has focused on their compilation, but they were also books that were intended to be read. We do not know a great deal about the activity and place of reading recipe books. It is not clear whether they were read in the kitchen, perhaps in the process of cooking, although there are rarely marks of use that would indicate this, such as food stains. This might have meant that they were more commonly used as reference books (or that they had been cleaned by subsequent owners). We also do not know precisely who used them: whether they read by the middle- and upper-class women who compiled them or whether cooks and kitchen maids also read them. We can assume, however, that they were looked over, re-read and filled with recipes copied from other books or scraps of paper, due to the many notations accompanying the recipes.

Recipe books were deeply embedded with a sense of sociability and personal identity. There is a clear sense of female ownership in many recipe books, as they were often inscribed with the formula of a woman’s name, followed by some variation on the phrase ‘her book’. This is very similar to the way they inscribed other, printed books; they wanted to stake a claim to the text and the book as an object. In the Wellcome Library’s collection of recipe books, many bear one or more women’s signatures. Searching for the term ‘her book’ for the years 1600–1699 in the Wellcome Library’s digitised collection of recipe books returned eighty-two results (although some were from the same manuscript). This signature is often accompanied by a date, for example in the case of Hannah Bisaker, who signed the manuscript, ‘Hannah Bisaker Her Booke The 12^th September Anno: 1692’.⁶² It is unclear if this refers to the date the manuscript was started, finished or even bought, but in general such inscriptions are clearly by the author of the book, being in the same hand. Such ownership claims are sometimes repeated, such as in Sarah Hudson’s receipt book.⁶³ On the first preliminary page, she wrote, ‘Sarah Hudsone hir Booke in y^e year of our Lord and Sa[v]ior Jesus Christ 1687/8’, then on the second preliminary page, ‘Sarah Hudson her book February y^e 15^th day in y^e year of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 1678’. It is unclear why she signed the first page so long after she had signed the second. Underneath the second signature she wrote, ‘Sarah hudson god preserue her in all her voiges wheathersoeuer she goetth god preserue & keep her in all parts of y^e world whear so euer she goeth & whith whosoeuer she goetth’. Her inscriptions amount to more than simple pen trials; they repeatedly stake her claim to the manuscript.

As well as personal ownership claims, there is frequently evidence of relationships within the pages of recipe books. Wall has argued that ‘recipes were transit points that actively created and defined knowledge communities and networks of association’.⁶⁴ Gift inscriptions were common in manuscript recipe books, again underlining the part books played in sociable and familial networks.⁶⁵ In Lady Frances Catchmay’s (d. 1629) recipe book, there is an inscription on the verso of the second preliminary page, reading:

This Booke with the others of Medicins, preserues and Cookerye, My lady Catchmay lefte with me to be delivered to her Sonne Sir William Catchmay Earnestly desiringe and Chardginge him to lett every one of his Brothers and Sisters to haue true Coppyes of the sayd Bookes, or such parte thereof as any of them doth desire. In witness that this was herrequest, I haue herevnto sett my hand at the delivery of the sayd Bookes. Ed. Bett.⁶⁶

Copies of the book are therefore being passed to both her sons and daughters, despite recipe books being traditionally seen as largely owned and created by women.⁶⁷ The fact that Catchmay asked for ‘true coppyes’ to be made of the book for ‘every one’ of his siblings indicates the value she placed on it as a bequest.

The similarity in the inscriptions of print and manuscript texts indicates the lack of any real dividing line between the two media in early modern inscription culture. They were inscribed with the same formula, making the same ownership claim. Manuscript recipe books were passed between friends and family, possibly carrying emotional or relational significance within that network, just as printed works were. However, if we follow Laroche’s argument that signatures were a way of claiming the knowledge contained within a book, this functioned in a slightly different way in manuscript recipe books. The person who signed the book was usually the compiler, thus the knowledge within the book was already theirs; the signature merely reinforces this. Leong has discussed women’s critical reading of print herbals and medicinal texts, and the ways in which they drew on their own knowledge both to read printed texts and compile manuscript books, arguing that they ‘fully utilised the offerings coming off the printing presses to extend, confirm and challenge their own medical knowledge’.⁶⁸ However, there is more care within manuscript recipe books to provide alternative attribution, ensuring that the signer does not lay claim to all the recipes contained therein.

Attribution was important in seventeenth-century receipt books, as Herbert has discussed when looking at the place of recipe books in early modern female sociable networks.⁶⁹ It was common for women to not only sign their books but also note the provenance of individual recipes. For example, Rebecca Winch’s receipt book (signed on the front flyleaf ‘Rebeckah Winche 1666’) contains multiple attributions referencing both acquaintances and well-known authors.⁷⁰ Her aqua mirabilis recipe has ‘Mrs Hobby’ written in the margins, while another recipe is entitled ‘The Lady Hewets Water’. There is also a recipe for ‘Lucatellos Balsom’, a common item in seventeenth-century manuscript recipe books and a reference to the physician Matthew Lucatello.⁷¹ Michelle DiMeo has also discussed how attributions can be used to situate women within intellectual networks, and are evidence of knowledge sharing among friends and acquaintances.⁷² Providing provenance for recipes and referring to well-known physicians and writers could have been a way of emphasising the compiler’s authority, claiming her place within a skilled and knowledgeable community. For the compiler herself, or for other readers (friends, family and servants), her identity, networks and reading habits (if, for example, they borrowed a recipe book from a friend and copied out useful entries) were made clear.

Provenance was not always provided, however, even when it is evident that recipes have been taken from printed sources. Margaret Baker’s manuscript,⁷³ which contains provenance notes of many recipes, also includes some recipes which bear striking similarities to those of Hannah Woolley, printed in The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight.⁷⁴ For example, Baker’s oil of fennel recipe reads, ‘Take a Quantity of ffennell between two tyles or plates of iron make them very hotte and presse outt y^e licoure; and this oyle is good for the tissicke or dry scabes & for burning or scaldinge’,⁷⁵ while Hannah Woolley’s printed recipe for the same product states, ‘Put a quantity of Fennel between two Tile-stones, or Plates of Iron, make them very hot, and press out the Liquor; and this Oyl will keep a great while, for it is good for the Tissick, dry Scab, burning and scalding.’⁷⁶ There is, however, no mention of Woolley in Baker’s book. These recipes may have been common, but the similarity of language used by both Woolley and Baker implies that Baker was familiar with Woolley’s work, rather than just including recipes that were common knowledge. If that is the case, she is therefore assuming Woolley’s culinary authority, indicating that the practice of attribution was complex and individual.⁷⁷ These practices of transcribing printed medical texts give us an insight into reading practices.⁷⁸ Women ‘engaged critically and selectively with their texts’, showing a complex and nuanced reading practice that did not simply rely on intellectual authority as represented by the printed text, but took into account their own lived experiences.⁷⁹

Alongside reading herbals and printed recipe books, some women’s compilations reveal their reading of key texts of the scientific revolution. By blending extracts from scientific texts with medicinal or culinary recipes, they more clearly situate their manuscripts in the world of science, making a clear statement about their intellectual understanding and identity.⁸⁰ Anne Wentworth Watson (1629–1695), Baroness Rockingham and daughter of Thomas Wentworth, the first Earl of Strafford, kept a commonplace book that evidences her scientific reading and understanding.⁸¹ This was written entirely in Latin, beginning with Latin phrases, and corrected by another hand. Following this, Watson copied out ‘Physiologiae Paripateticae’ and ‘De Phylosophia Moralis’. The former was a textbook on Aristotelian natural philosophy, published by Johannes Magirus in 1597, and still in use in the seventeenth century. The latter is likely taken from Phillip Melanchthon’s Epitome philosophiae moralis, first published in 1538, which explored the links between natural philosophy and the laws of God. If Watson herself was the transcriber of these texts (it would appear that, even if she did not write the book herself, she caused it to be written, as her name is written on the front flyleaf in the same hand as the majority of the text), then this reveals a good understanding of Latin and an interest in Aristotelian natural philosophy.

Similarly, Sarah Horsington’s manuscript, held in the Clark Library, is a collection of medical, chemical and culinary writings, combining extracts from contemporary scientific texts with recipes and her husband’s medical notes (see Figure 4.1).⁸² It provides an interesting example of the problems associated with separating commonplace and recipe books in modern scholarship, and demonstrates the ways in which early modern women’s knowledge has been treated. Horsington, of whom there appear to be no other extant records, gave the manuscript a title, with its own title page in imitation of print conventions: Arcana, or, Mysteries in ye theory of physiology and chymistry: being authentick rules, for preparing spagyricall medicaments, for my own observation and satisfaction. Also are manyfold private receipts, and remedies, prescriptions of T: H: M: D: Collected by ye Industry of the transcriber, of this manuscript, uxoris ejus S: H:. She clearly identifies her role in the compilation of the manuscript, both by the reference to herself as Thomas Horsington’s wife (‘uxoris ejus’) in the title and by inscribing her name on the first page.⁸³

Horsington’s manuscript has been largely overlooked by scholars.⁸⁴ The book contains extracts from learned works alongside recipes, demonstrating the significant overlap of the two forms. There is, moreover, quite clear evidence of Horsington’s personal reading practices in the extracts she has transcribed, particularly those at the beginning and end of the manuscript. Before the title, on the verso of the first page of the manuscript, Horsington wrote out extracts from Robert Boyle’s Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Naturall Philosophy.⁸⁵ She used quite selective quotation, however, in one piece quoting at length from Boyle but removing any sentences dealing with St Augustine. The reason for this is unclear, but it is unlikely that it was simply a mistake: in the last sentence, Horsington accidentally omitted the words ‘a provident’ (from ‘by Solomon God sends the sluggard to schoole to the Ant, to learne a provident Industry’⁸⁶), and made a little mark in the text to indicate missing words, writing them at the end of the quotation. It may have been that some of the passages Boyle quoted from Augustine were in Latin, which Horsington might not have been able to understand. She preceded this extract, the last of three on the page, with a subtitle reading, ‘Mr Boyle. speaking of contemplating the works of God’, providing some provenance for the text.

From her extracts, we can also see her interaction with printed marginalia. She quoted: ‘each page in the Great volume of Nature is full of Real Hieroglyphicks, where (by an inverted way of expression) things stand for words, and their qualities for letters. The heavens declare the glorie of God: Psal: 19’. In the original, this reads: ‘each Page in the great Volume of Nature is full of real Hieroglyphicks, where (by an inverted way of Expression) Things stand for Words, and their Qualities for Letters. The Psalmist observes, That the Heavens declare the glory of God’, with a note in the margins reading ‘Psal. 19. 1’.⁸⁷ Horsington clearly paraphrased the text, making use of the marginal notation for reference.

The extract in between the two discussed above, which are on consecutive pages, comes from much earlier in Boyle’s book, on page 16. Here Boyle was discussing Pliny’s writing on insects, but again there is some evidence of Horsington skipping certain sections of the quote. Her manuscript reads:

Pliny in y^e II book nat: Hist: treating of Insects, transported with an unwonted admiration of the workmanship of Nature rerum artificio: In nothing elsewhere is the workmanship of nature more remarkable then in y^e contexture of these little creatures. & after a wonder, not unworthy of a Philosopher, he concludes Rerum Natura nusquam magis quam in minimis tota est: Nature in Her whole Power is never more wholly seene then in Her smallest works.⁸⁸

In Boyle’s text, this section included more Latin text:

Pliny in the eleventh Book of his Natural History, where he treats of Insects, is a little after the entrance, transported with an unwonted admiration of the Workmanship of Nature in them: Nusquam alibi (says he) spectatiore Naturae rerum artificio: In nothing elswhere (saith he) is the workmanship of Nature more remarkable then in the contexture of these little Creatures. And after a Wonder, not unworthy a Philosopher, he concludes, Rerum Natura nusquam magis quam in minimis tota est: Nature in her whole Power is never more wholly seen then in her smallest Works.⁸⁹

Horsington therefore missed a few words between ‘Nature’ and ‘rerum’, the majority of them Latin. This is common in her manuscript. There are more extracts from Boyle’s Experimental Naturall Philosophy at the end of the manuscript, on the final two pages. Horsington copied a short passage about a fear of spiders, taken from chapter 16, followed by a longer extract from the very beginning of the book and one short extract in which Boyle quotes Galen.⁹⁰ She again quoted very carefully and accurately, but missed out large sections of the text, all of which contained parts in Latin. Indeed, in the passage dealing with Galen, Boyle provided both the Latin original and the English translation, and it is this latter section that Horsington transcribed. While the rest of the manuscript does contain Latin, this may have been from her husband’s papers, while the extracts from Boyle were Horsington’s own selections. This could reinforce the practice of her re-reading her own commonplace book; there would be little point in fully transcribing passages in Latin if she could not understand them. This might also indicate a mode of reading that passes over Latin script: perhaps when Horsington was reading Boyle, she ignored the Latin passages that she knew she would not understand. She may have had some level of Latin (certainly the Pliny quote includes some phrases), but perhaps not enough for her to pay close attention to transcribing it. This would result in a very different reading experience to those who had the language capabilities to comprehend the entire text.

It is unclear why the section on insects was inserted; whether Horsington felt that it complemented the other quotations or if it is evidence of a disrupted or selective reading process. It may be indicative of re-reading, with Horsington writing out quotes when they struck her as important, if we assume that the transcription took place over an extended period of time. It may also, of course, have been simply a copy of her husband’s notes, but the position of the extracts before the title page of the manuscript implies that it could have been a separate endeavour to the transcription of Thomas Horsington’s papers. This selective quotation is also evident at the top of the page, where Horsington wrote out Greek script, followed underneath by the words, ‘The manyfold wisdome of God’. This is also present in Boyle’s text on page 38, with Greek script preceding what is presumably an English translation, reading, ‘manifold Wisdom of God’.⁹¹ Perhaps Horsington felt that this was a particularly useful phrase, or was interested in the Greek. In general, there is no obvious reason as to why Horsington chose these extracts in particular to transcribe, but the carefulness with which she copied from the text, and the selectiveness employed within the extracts, indicate a careful and thoughtful reading process.

The extracts are positioned at the beginning and end of the manuscript, with none of the formatting features (such as pagination) of the main body of the text, which she has entitled the Arcana. It is possible that she added them later, or perhaps before she compiled the Arcana. Whichever it was, the influence of Boyle’s Experimental Naturall Philosophy is clear, both in the extracts discussed here and in the main body of the text, where she references him several times. Her manuscript is dated 1666, only three years after Boyle published Experimental Naturall Philosophy. Horsington, or perhaps her husband, were clearly up to date in the latest scientific thinking: Boyle’s work in the 1660s brought him widespread attention, and he was a leading thinker in seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy.⁹²

Horsington’s ownership of the manuscript itself is evidenced by the inscription on the first page, where she wrote, ‘Sarah Horsington Her Manuscript. Bought 21, 10mb^r Pretiu[m] 16^d’.⁹³ This does, admittedly, imply at least some familiarity with Latin (‘pretium’ translates as ‘price’), but it does not mean that she would have been competent enough to read philosophical arguments in the language. While Horsington may have called herself a ‘transcriber’, she clearly plays a much more direct authorial role, not simply copying out extracts from Boyle and from her husband’s papers but editing and commenting on them. Moreover, the manuscript appears to have been intended for her own use, implying a practice of re-reading and referencing.

A great deal of the rest of the manuscript is given over to receipts of various kinds, culinary, medical and chemical. There is a glossary of chemical symbols and a list of medical terms in Latin, along with comments on the effectiveness and methods of the receipts. Horsington made her ownership of some of the content clear, writing in the title of the work, ‘for my own observation and satisfaction’. Evidently this was a manuscript used by Horsington beyond the initial compilation, and perhaps served multiple purposes; it may have been a connection to her husband, as well as a place for her reading notes and attempts to understand and perhaps use Boyle’s work, and her inclusion of the extracts served to emphasise her own knowledge and understanding.

Conclusion

When looked at through the lens of reading, both manuscript and print, women’s understanding of and engagement with early modern science and philosophy becomes much more evident to modern observers. Most women may not have accessed the spaces traditionally associated with early modern science, and they may not have always read some of the key scientific texts of the period (works by authors such as Robert Hooke, William Harvey or Isaac Newton, for example, have not appeared in this chapter). However, through their reading they could still engage in practices at the heart of the scientific revolution – observation and experimentation.

Crucially, this is a story of manuscript reading. As I argued in Chapter 3, if we focus on print reading above all else, then we miss a great deal of women’s experiences. Relatively few women (although there are some important exceptions here) appear to have read the mainstays of the scientific revolution or were clearly up to date in the latest philosophical or scientific theories. However, they were clearly reading about culinary science and medicine, often evidenced through the compilation of their own recipe books which evidently relied on both experiment and the reading of other people’s recipes. That is not to say, however, that women were not interested in reading about the intellectual developments of the seventeenth century. Clearly, they had an interest in philosophy, medicine, physics and chemistry. Astell’s reading of Descartes and Malebranche, and Horsington’s reading of Boyle, as well as the ways in which they read those texts, demonstrate their extensive knowledge and understanding of contemporary scientific methods, constructing themselves as intellectual figures. Their use in particular of the hallmarks of ‘active’ reading such as annotation and commonplacing, so often associated with humanist scholars earlier in the period, reinforces this scholarly and intellectual identity.

This is also a story of re-reading. Recipes books, by their very nature, would be read and re-read multiple times, as additions were made and the recipes themselves were used. Astell, Horsington and Wentworth Watson may have made multiple readings of both the printed texts and of their own notes on those texts. As will be explored in the next chapter, this process of re-reading is one we should not ignore or pass over, as it reveals a great deal about not only how women used text but also how they understood themselves and their world.

Notes

1. 1.  Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Rima D. Apple, Gregory J. Downey and Stephen L. Vaughn, eds., Science in Print: Essays on the History of Science and the Culture of Print (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012); Susan Dackerman, ed., Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2011); Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

2. 2.  See, for example, Sandrine Parageau, ‘Auto Didacticism and the Construction of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern England: Margaret Cavendish’s and Anne Conway’s “Intellectual Bricolage”’, in Women and Science, 17th Century to Present: Pioneers, Activists and Protagonists, ed. Donna Spalding Andréolle and Véronique Molinari (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 3–18.

3. 3.  There has been a great deal of important work on the intellectual influences of seventeenth-century women who were known for their participation in scientific or philosophical discussions. The reading materials of Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, Damaris Masham and others have been examined, often as a way of exploring how they formed their own theories and ideas. Elizabeth Spiller, for example, has considered how Cavendish’s role as a reader influenced her own theories of reading, as put forward in her published works. Spiller argues that Cavendish gave agency to the role of the reader; that her ‘own texts imagine active readers who are not simply necessary to the creation of knowledge but powerful enough to threaten that knowledge’. See Elizabeth Spiller, Science, Reading and Renaissance Literature: The Art of Making Knowledge, 1580–1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Spiller, ‘Reading through Galileo’s Telescope: Margaret Cavendish and the Experience of Reading’, Renaissance Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2000): 192–221.

4. 4.  Karen Detlefsen, ‘The Rise of a Public Science? Women and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period’, in The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David Marshall Miller and Dana Jalobeanu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 128–145.

5. 5.  Elaine Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science and the Household in Early Modern England (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

6. 6.  Both writing marginal annotations on books and the practice of creating ‘commonplace’ books from textual excerpts have been seen as mainstays of humanist education and reading practices. Commonplace books were originally part of humanist pedagogy, wherein a reader would collect short extracts of text under various headings in a manuscript book (such as fortune, virtue, justice, death and life), intended to provide a personal compendium of information to be used later, often in original composition. These compilations were used as part of a young boy’s education, and as part of scholarly work. This originated with the Italian florilegium in the fifteenth century: excerpting and collecting quotations from classical texts was an important part of their recovery. Italian private schools in the early fifteenth century were key to the development of European classical education, and the use of notebooks for reading notes was a key part of their curriculum. See Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). The form developed, however, and was a popular reading tool across many social groups in the seventeenth century. For work on prolific male commonplacers, such as William Drake and John Dee, see Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995).

7. 7.  Lara Dodds, ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Domestic Experiment’, in Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern England, ed. Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle (London: Routledge, 2007), 163; Wendy Wall, Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

8. 8.  Dodds, ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Domestic Experiment’, 164.

9. 9.  David Marshall Miller and Dana Jalobeanu, ‘The Disciplinary Revolutions of Early Modern Philosophy and Science’, in The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David Marshall Miller and Dana Jalobeanu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 1–12.

10. 10.  Patricia Phillips, The Scientific Lady: A Social History of Women’s Scientific Interests 1520–1918 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990), 85.

11. 11.  John Evelyn, ‘Directions for the employment of your time [to Mary Evelyn]’; [early 1680s?]. British Library Add MS 78440, f38r. His underlinings.

12. 12.  Jacques du Bosc, for example, argued that reading was ‘absolutely necessary to render both the wit and the humor [of women] acceptable’, and Hannah Woolley stated that ‘Reading furnisheth them [women] with agreeable discourse, and adopts them for the conversation of the most ingenious.’ See Jacques du Bosc, The Accomplish’d Woman. Written Originally in French, since made English, by the Honourable Walter Montague, Esq (London: Printed for Gabriel Bedell and Tho. Collins, 1656), 67; Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion; Or, A Guide to the Female Sex: Containing Directions of Behaviour, in all Places, Companies, Relations, and Conditions, from their Childhood down to Old Age: Viz. As, Children to Parents. Scholars to Governours. Single to Servants. Virgins to Suitors. Married to Husbands. Huswifes to the House. Mistresses to the Servants. Mothers to Children. Widows to the World. Prudent to all. With Letters and Discourses upon all Occasions. Whereunto is added, A Guide for Cook-Maids, Dairy-Maids, Chamber-Maids, and all others that go to Service. The whole being an exact Rule for the Female Sex in General (London: Printed by A. Maxwell for Dorman Nowman, 1673), 7.

13. 13.  Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues. With An Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education (London: Printed by J. D., 1673), 35.

14. 14.  For the relationship between Makin and male contemporaries and predecessors, such as Milton and Poulain de la Barre, see James L. Helm, ‘Bathsua Makin’s An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen in the Canon of Seventeenth-Century Educational Reform Tracts’, Cahiers Elisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies 44, no. 1 (1993): 45–51.

15. 15.  Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest (New York: Source Book Press, 1970), 20. As will be seen later in this chapter, she enacted her prescriptions, being an avid reader of both Descartes and Malebranche.

16. 16.  Astell, A Serious Proposal, 129.

17. 17.  Melissa Reynolds has examined the importance of manuscripts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the spread and development of knowledge about the natural world – see Melissa Reynolds, Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2024).

18. 18.  This connection between scientific ideas and print culture is most clearly shown in Elizabeth Eisenstein’s influential claim that the printing press was one of the key causes of the scientific revolution. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

19. 19.  Graham Parry, ‘The Great Picture of Lady Anne Clifford’, in Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England, 1550–1700: Volume 5: Anne Clifford and Lucy Hutchinson, ed. Mihoko Suzuki and Mary Ellen Lamb (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 121–138.

20. 20.  For more information on early modern herbals, see Sarah Neville, Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade: English Stationers and the Commodification of Botany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

21. 21.  ‘An Inventory of Bookes in the Lady Heaths closett’, Egerton MS 2983 HEATH AND VERNEY PAPERS. Vol. VI, f79r. British Library. For more discussion of Heath’s books, see Chapter 1.

22. 22.  Christof Wirsung, The General Practise of Physicke. Conteyning all Inward and Outward parts of the body, with all the accidents and infirmities that are incident unto them, even from the crowne of the head to the sole of the foote (London: Printed for Thomas Adams, 1617).

23. 23.  John H. Appleby, ‘Woodall, John (1570–1643)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2008, accessed July 18, 2023, www-oxforddnb-com.libproxy.york.ac.uk/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-29902?rskey=dxcH6R&result=1.

24. 24.  Appleby, ‘Woodall, John’.

25. 25.  See, for example, Sarah Hutton, ‘Alchemy and Cultures of Knowledge among Early Modern Women’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 15, no. 2 (2021): 93–102; Penny Bayer, ‘Women Alchemists and the Paracelsian Context in France and England, 1560–1616’, Early Modern Women 15, no. 2 (2021): 103–112.

26. 26.  Jacques Guillemeau, Child-birth or, The happy delivery of women: VVherein is set downe the government of women. In the time of their breeding childe: of their travaile, both naturall and contrary to nature: and of their lying in. Together with the diseases, which happen to women in those times, and the meanes to helpe them. With a treatise for the nursing of children. To which is added, a treatise of the diseases of infants, and young children: with the cure of them, and also of the small pox. Written in French by Iames Guillimeau the French Kings chirurgion (London: Printed by A. Hatfield, 1612).

27. 27.  Raymond A. Anselment, ed., The Remembrances of Elizabeth Freke, 1671–1714, Camden Fifth Series, vol. 18 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 173–175.

28. 28.  Anselment, Remembrances, 174.

29. 29.  James Hodder, Hodder’s Arithemetick: Or, that necessary Art made most easie. Being explained in a way familiar to the capacity of any that desire to learn it in a little time (London, Printed by J. Darby, for Tho. Rooks, 1667). Z90 14, Beinecke Library, New Haven.

30. 30.  Ruth Wallis, ‘Hodder, James (fl.1659–1673)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, accessed July 18, 2023, www-oxforddnb-com.libproxy.york.ac.uk/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13416?rskey=A70mMl&result=1.

31. 31.  Robert Fage, Cosmography Or, A Description of the Whole World, Rpresented (by a more exact and certain Discovery) in the Excellencies of its Scituation, Commodities, Inhabitants, and History: Of Their Particular and Distinct Governments, Religions, Arms, and Degrees of Honour used amongst Them (London, Printed by S. Griffin for John Overton, 1667). 2005 316, Beinecke Library.

32. 32.  Philip Barrough, The Method of Phisicke, Containing the causes, signes, and cures of inward diseases in mans body from the head to the foote. Whereunto is added, the forme and rule of making remedies and medicines, which our Physitions commonly use at this day, with the proportion, quantitie, and names of each medicine (Imprinted at London by Richard Field, 1596). RB 28188, Huntington Library, San Marino.

33. 33.  Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book. Or the whole art of midwifery discovered. Directing childbearing women how to behave themselves (London: Printed for Simon Miller, 1671). EPB/A/47965, Wellcome Library, London.

34. 34.  Catherine Sutherland has written about the discovery of Astell’s library and its contents; see Catherine Sutherland, ‘Books Owned by Mary Astell in the Old Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge’, The Library 24, no. 3 (2023): 267–301.

35. 35.  Hilda L. Smith, Reason’s Disciples: Seventeenth-Century English Feminists (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1982); Ruth Perry, ‘Radical Doubt and the Liberation of Women’, Eighteenth Century Studies 18, no. 4 (1985): 472–493; Jacqueline Broad, ‘Astell, Cartesian Ethics, and the Critique of Custom’, in Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith, ed. William Kolbrener and Michal Michelson (London: Routledge, 2007), 165–180.

36. 36.  Jacqueline Broad, The Philosophy of Mary Astell: An Early Modern Theory of Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 27.

37. 37.  René Descartes, Les Principes de la Philosophie (A Paris: Chez Theodore Girard, 1681), 3. H.14.18, Magdalene College, Cambridge. Translation: ‘that our senses are prone to deception, and that there is no certain truth in their testimony. The Life of Plato by Dacier, p76 … Sight and hearing have both some truth, and their testimony is faithful or the Poets would have reason to sing to us that we neither understand nor see anything truly’.

38. 38.  For more on Dacier, see Déborah Blocker, ‘Servir le prince par la philologie: André Dacier (1651–1722), un érudit dans l’orbite du pouvoir royal’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies 35, no. 1 (2013): 3–22. Dacier was married to Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, also a prominent translator and classicist – for information on her life, see Eliane Itti, Madame Dacier, femme et savant du Grand Siècle: 1645–1720 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012).

39. 39.  André Dacier, Les Oeuvres de Platon Traduites en Francois, avec des Remarques. Et la Vie de ce Philosophe, avec l’exposition des principaux dogmes de la Philosophie. Tome Première (A Paris: Chez Jean Anisson Directeur de l’Imprimerie Royale, 1694), 75–76.

40. 40.  André Dacier, Les Oeuvres de Platon Traduites en Francois, avec des Remarques. Et la Vie de ce Philosophe, avec l’exposition des principaux dogmes de la Philosophie. Tome Seconde (A Paris: Chez Jean Anisson Directeur de l’Imprimerie Royale, 1694), 174.

41. 41.  Nicolas Malebranche, De la recherche de la verité, où, L’on traitte de la nature de l’esprit de l’homme, & de l’usage qu’il en doit faire pour éviter l’erreur dans les sciences, Vol. 1 (A Amsterdam: Chez Henry Desbordes, 1688), 36. B.8.29, Magdalene College. For more on Astell and Malebranche, see Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell’s Malebranchean Concept of the Self’, in Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, ed. Emily Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 211–226.

42. 42.  Malebranche, De la recherche de la verité. B.8.29, Magdalene College.

43. 43.  Lloyd Strickland, ‘God’s Creatures? Divine Nature and the Status of Animals in the Early Modern Beast–Machine Controversy’, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 74, no. 4 (2013): 291–309.

44. 44.  Strickland, ‘God’s Creatures?’, 295.

45. 45.  José Manuel García Valverde, ‘Gómez Pereira’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (summer 2022 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), accessed July 17, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/gomez-pereira.

46. 46.  Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 271.

47. 47.  Peter Harrison, ‘Descartes on Animals’, The Philosophical Quarterly 42, no. 167 (1992): 219–227.

48. 48.  Descartes, Les Principes. H.14.18, Magdalene College.

49. 49.  Edmund Halley, ‘A Discourse Concerning Gravity, and Its Properties, Wherein the Descent of Heavy Bodies, and the Motion of Projects is briefly, but Fully Handled: Together with the Solution of a Problem of Great Use in Gunnery’, Philosophical Transactions (1683–1775), Vol. 16 (1686–1692), 3–4.

50. 50.  Nicolas Malebranche, Meditations Chrestiennes, par L’Auteur de la Recherche de la Vérité (A Cologne, Chez Balthasar D’Egmond & Compagnie, 1683). G.17.6, Magdalene College.

51. 51.  Sarah Hutton, British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 103. Sorana Corneanu and Koen Vermeir have argued that Malebranche, Bacon, Descartes and other contemporary philosophers were all interested in the ‘art of thinking’, and that central to this was understanding the human mind – see Sorana Corneanu and Koen Vermeir, ‘The Art of Thinking’, in The Cambridge History of the Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David Marshall Miller and Dana Jalobeanu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 149–166.

52. 52.  Robert Boyle, Some considerations about the reconcileableness of reason and religion by T.E., a lay-man; to which is annex’d by the publisher, a discourse of Mr. Boyle, about the possibility of the resurrection (London: Printed by T. N. for H. Herringman, 1675), 30.

53. 53.  René Descartes, Les Meditations Metaphysiques de René Descartes. Touchant la Première Philosophie (A Paris: chez Theodore Girard, 1667). H.14.17, Magdalene College. Translation: ‘Discourse on the method of rightly conducting one’s reason and of seeking truth in the sciences. Then the Diotrique, the Meteors and the Geometry which are essays of this method.’

54. 54.  Malebranche, De la recherche de la verité. B.8.29, Magdalene College. Translation: ‘it is more than 25 years since this work was composed’.

55. 55.  Pere Malebranche, Traité de la Nature et de la Grace (A Rotterdam: Chez Rainier Leers, 1701). D.6.52, Magdalene College.

56. 56.  Nicolas Malebranche, Traité de Morale par l’Auteur de la Recherche de la Verité (A Rotterdam, Chez Reinier Leers, 1684). D.6.53, Magdalene College.

57. 57.  Malebranche, Meditations Chrestiennes. G.17.6, Magdalene College.

58. 58.  Sara Pennell and Michelle DiMeo have argued that recipe books, like commonplace books, can be seen as a form of life-writing. See Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell, ‘Introduction’, in Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550–1800, ed. Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 11.

59. 59.  Wall, Recipes for Thought, 4. Similarly, Pennell has argued, ‘the alignment of women’s intellectual practices with the prevailing educational parameters for the male population overshadows the extra-pedagogic ways in which women encountered, meditated and registered varieties of knowledge’. See Sara Pennell, ‘Perfecting Practice? Women, Manuscript Recipes and Knowledge in Early Modern England’, in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium, ed. Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 246.

60. 60.  Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, 3.

61. 61.  Leong, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, 3.

62. 62.  Bisaker, Hannah, 1692, MS.1176, Wellcome Library.

63. 63.  Hudson, Sarah, 1678, MS.2954, Wellcome Library.

64. 64.  Wall, Recipes for Thought, 3.

65. 65.  Sara Pennell has argued for the centrality of relationships to the creation of manuscript recipe books, suggesting that these manuscripts were ‘made possible by, and thrived upon, the circulation of recipes between mothers, sisters and daughters, friends and neighbours of all ranks’. See Pennell, ‘Perfecting Practice?’, 242.

66. 66.  Catchmay, Lady Frances, 1625, MS.184a, Wellcome Library.

67. 67.  There is not room here to discuss the implications of manuscript recipe books or other compilations being left in wills, but this would provide an interesting insight into the make-up of the recipients of such inheritances.

68. 68.  Elaine Leong, ‘ “Herbals She Peruseth”: Reading Medicine in Early Modern England’, Renaissance Studies 28, no. 4 (2014): 556–578. Melissa Reynolds has made a similar point regarding fifteenth- and sixteenth-century ‘practical manuscripts’; that they ‘excerpted, revised, and amended authoritative knowledge to suit the needs of the compilers and consumers’. Reynolds, Reading Practice, 4–5.

69. 69.  Amanda Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).

70. 70.  Rebecca Winch, Receipt Book of Rebeckah Winche, ca. 1666. V.b.366, Folger Library, Washington, DC.

71. 71.  Lucatello’s balsam was an early modern panacea, known to have been used by Isaac Newton and John Evelyn, among others. See Rob Iliffe, ‘Isaac Newton: Lucatello Professor of Mathematics’, in Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge, ed. Christopher Lawrence and Steven Shapin (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 135.

72. 72.  Michelle DiMeo, ‘Authorship and Medical Networks: Reading Attributions in Early Modern Manuscript Recipe Books’, in Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550–1800, ed. Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 25–46.

73. 73.  Margaret Baker, Receipt Book of Margaret Baker, c.1675. V.a.619, Folger Library.

74. 74.  Woolley was a popular writer at the time, and The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight underwent nine print runs in the late seventeenth century (1670–1706). See Doreen Evenden Nagy, Popular Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988), 70.

75. 75.  V.a.619, f52r, Folger Library.

76. 76.  Hannah Woolley, The Accomplish’d lady’s delight in preserving, physick, beautifying, and cookery, (London, Printed for B. Harris, 1675), 171. There have been many questions about the attribution of this work to Woolley, but as her name was on the printed edition in 1675, and thus was the name associated with the book by its readers, the authorship will not be contested here. For a recent discussion of Woolley’s works and attribution, see Margaret J. M. Ezell, ‘Cooking the Books, or, the Three Faces of Hannah Woolley’, in Reading and Writing Recipe Books, 1550–1800, ed. Michelle DiMeo and Sara Pennell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 159–178.

77. 77.  It is possibly significant that the lack of attribution here relates to the work of a female author, but there is no clear evidence that this was a gendered practice.

78. 78.  Leong has studied Elizabeth Freke’s notes on Gerard’s herbal, pointing out that Freke rarely copied word for word, but rephrased and paraphrased the printed text. Leong suggests that this indicates that Freke consulted other sources and listened to her own or her acquaintances’ experience; that her ‘reading for [medical] practice was not a hurried consultation of indices or a hunt for particular rare cures, rather it was a slow process of repeated readings, conversations and digestion’. Similarly, she uses the example of Margaret Boscawen, who took notes from Culpeper but imposed her own classification system. Elaine Leong, ‘Herbals She Peruseth’, 564, 567, 572. See earlier in this chapter for the mention of Freke’s notes on the herbal in her book inventory.

79. 79.  Leong, ‘Herbals She Peruseth’, 572.

80. 80.  For a discussion of how the notebook form of the humanist commonplace developed during the scientific revolution, see Richard Yeo, Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

81. 81.  Anne Wentworth Watson, Baroness Rockingham, [Commonplace Book], [17th Century], Osborn b285, Beinecke Library.

82. 82.  Sarah Horsington, Arcana, or, Mysteries in ye theory of physiology and chymistry: being authentick rules, for preparing spagyricall medicaments, for my own observation and satisfaction. Also are manyfold private receipts, and remedies, prescriptions of T: H: M: D: Collected by ye Industry of the transcriber, of this manuscript, uxoris ejus S: H:, 1666, MS.2009.015, Clark Library, Los Angeles.

83. 83.  Although there are no other records of Sarah, her husband Thomas (1616–1688) is recorded as a physician who trained in Leiden and practised in London. He was interested in iatrochemistry, an interest apparently shared with Sarah. See ‘Dr [Thomas] Horsington (c.1618–1666)’, Early Modern Practitioners: Sample Data, accessed April 25, 2019, http://practitioners.exeter.ac.uk/sample-data.

84. 84.  One of its only mentions comes from Lynette Hunter, who has discussed it in relation to scientific writings by women in the mid-seventeenth century, centred on Katherine Jones’ circle. Hunter described Horsington’s manuscript as a commonplace book, whose ‘effect is patterned on Boyle’s and Willis’s commentaries, yet is hard at work hammering out a distinctive vocabulary and syntax or discussion’. However, Hunter does not take this discussion any further, and the manuscript’s significance for the history of reading and its relationship to the tradition of commonplacing has not been explored. Lynette Hunter, ‘Sisters of the Royal Society: The Circle of Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh’, in Women, Science and Medicine 1500–1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society, ed. Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1997), 191.

85. 85.  MS.2009.015. f1v, Clark Library.

86. 86.  Robert Boyle, Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Naturall Philosophy, Propos’d in a Familiar Discourse to a Friend, by way of Invitation to the Study of it (Oxford: Printed by Hen: Hall Printer to the University, for Ric: Davis, 1663), 50.

87. 87.  Boyle, Some Considerations, 49.

88. 88.  MS.2009.015. f1v, Clark Library.

89. 89.  Boyle, Some Considerations, 16.

90. 90.  Referring to Boyle, Some Considerations, 262; 6–8; 17.

91. 91.  Boyle, Some Considerations, 38.

92. 92.  Michael Hunter, ed., Robert Boyle Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Lotte Mulligan, ‘Robert Boyle, “The Christian Virtuoso” and the Rhetoric of “Reason”’, in Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe, ed. Robert Crocker (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 97–116.

93. 93.  MS.2009.015. f1r, Clark Library.