Petty Catalogue (Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts) - Hardcover

Sir William Petty (1623-1687), F.R.S., pioneering economist, demographer and virtuoso, was described by Samuel Pepys as the most rational man he had ever heard speak. His archive, the record of a lifelong study of "those Symiteries whereby the world stands", is one of the most important to have survived for the study of the Scientific Revolution. Preserved by his descendants until its acquisition by The British Library in 1993, it contains many unpublished writings on political economy, demography, the new science, and Anglo-Irish relations - including the only copy in the British Isles of the famous (or infamous) "Down Survey" of Ireland, by which Protestant land settlement there was established. The present catalogue begins with an extended historical introduction, followed by a detailed and fully-indexed catalogue, relating each document to its chronological and textual content, to Petty's unpublished works and to relevant material elsewhere.