The Carl Linnaeus Notebook 1725 - 1727

 €140.00

The Carl Linnaeus Notebook 1725 - 1727; the very first work written by the world famous naturalist. This is probably one of the most important works to help us understand the real Linnaeus.

The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) was uniquely gifted in the field of natural and cultural sciences and became world-famous for the system of classification and the nomenclature that he developed which botanists and zoologists use to this day. His young life and sphere of thinking is relatively little known to most people. It is therefore of great importance for the understanding of Linnaeus' world – but also as an inspiration – that, in the learned series Mundus Linnæi, we are able to publish the very first known writing by his hand.

The Carl Linnaeus Notebook 1725 - 1727, now introduced in English for the first time, is the oldest manuscript by the famous naturalist. It was written between the years 1725 and 1727 during his final years at Växjö Gymnasium. Apart from being highly valuable because of its age, the Notebook demonstrates the rapid development of a remarkable young man with a fascination for natural history and medicine, besides which it foreshadows in many ways Linnaeus’s future work. It contains quotations from more than 70 different learned works and reveals how fully he understood that plants have gender, a characteristic not generally accepted at the time, but which would later come to be of great significance as he developed his system of plant classification. In order to understand how, from very early on in his life, the son of a clergyman in the province of Småland in southern Sweden could become so deeply interested in natural history and, what is more, obtain advanced literature to satisfy that interest, it is necessary to start from his very early years.


THREE VOLUMES IN A SOLANDER BOX – Only 500 numbered copies have been printed, in three Volumes.

THE FACSIMILE is a complete facsimile edition of the Notebook, including handwritten text, sketches, drawings and tables. The format of the Notebook is 100 x 150mm and it contains 169 pages. In their relatively complicated approach, the notes reveal a mature young man with touches of brilliance.

THE TRANSCRIPTION includes the complete transcription of the Notebook, page for page, into English. Here the sometimes hard-to-read notes are made accessible. Included is an extensive index with classified search terms.

THE COMMENTS: the writer/transcriber Torbjörn Lindell contributes his comments on the texts in the Notebook. The young Linnaeus’ quotations from about 70 learned oeuvres are commented on, as are the reasons and the means by which Linnaeus came to have access to them, their characteristics, scientific and scholarly significance and notes on where they appear in the original Notebook. It is possible to follow how the young Linnaeus developed through his own choice of sources. Not unexpectedly, it then transpires that the later notes refer to more purely scientific works. Particular attention has naturally been devoted to the sections where Linnaeus draws on his very own resources. Other chapters in the volume present descriptions of surroundings of significance for the genesis of the Notebook. Little is known of the fate of the Notebook after he left school in 1727. The volume is sumptuously illustrated.

THE SOLANDER BOX: a box handmade in 18th century style for the safe keeping of the volumes, covered in marbled paper, the spine in specially dyed cloth, spine titles in leather. Inside is fixed the unique numbering (1 - 500) of the publication, printed on handmade paper in genuine letterpress printing. The handmade paper comes from Lessebo handpaper mill, a paper-mill, located as it happens in Carl Linnaeus' childhood home province of Småland, Sweden, where it has been in business since 1693.