The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton's Manuscripts

Dry (former research fellow, London Sch. of Economics; Curie: A Life) shows a distinct way to decipher the "mean, mad genius" of Isaac Newton, who died in 1727, aged 84, leaving no will—and vast numbers of unorganized unpublished writings. Dry's book is not a biography of the man but of his manifold papers and our evolving understanding of (and sympathies toward) them as they traveled across time and ownership. The documents reveal Newton's interests beyond the scientific and the mathematical, showing such fascinations as religious demystification and alchemy. While conventional biographies of Newton have shown his many and eccentric concerns, Dry's story of how Newton's writings, seemingly calling into question the soundness of mind of their creator, were handled by those charged with their care. The author includes enlightening portraits of the people who sought out Newton's sundry scribbles. Initial readers were scandalized by Newton's unveiled anti-Trinitarianism, but Judaic scholar Abraham Shalom Yahudo, who purchased the material, outlined Newton's actual visions of religious tolerance. Newton's abstruse alchemical writings were likewise largely ignored until economist John Maynard Keynes obtained them at auction in 1935. Dry interweaves her study with the absorbing development of manuscript collecting and cataloging.