Catalogue Entry: MINT00195

Holograph notes on the denominations, fineness and weight of various foreign coins, with a letter to Catherine Barton dated 5 August 1700 on the reverse

Author: Isaac Newton

Source: MINT 19/2/30, National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, UK

[Normalized Text] [Diplomatic Text]

Contents

On reverse of a holograph letter dated 5 August 1700 from Newton to Catherine Barton [his half-niece], wishing her well with her recovery from smallpox.

Notes

The manuscript is badly damaged and all the printed versions contain a number of conjectural readings.

The letter to Barton is very well represented in print, appearing in David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1855), 2: 213, in Louis Trenchard More, Isaac Newton (New York and London, 1934), 470-1, in Craig, NATM, 27, in NC, 4: 349-50, and in Westfall, 595. It does not seem to have occurred to any of the authors or editors of these works that the fact that Newton used the same sheet for notes on coinage rather suggests he never sent the letter (though it is of course possible he sent another copy).

© 2024 The Newton Project

Professor Rob Iliffe
Director, AHRC Newton Papers Project

Scott Mandelbrote,
Fellow & Perne librarian, Peterhouse, Cambridge

Faculty of History, George Street, Oxford, OX1 2RL - newtonproject@history.ox.ac.uk

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