Editorial Note

This collection of letters presents a selection of previously unpublished correspondence between Mary Somerville and some of her closest friends, colleagues and scientific acquaintances. Several of these letters derive from the Mary Somerville Collection held at Somerville College. Others were selected for inclusion by Dr Brigitte Stenhouse for their capacity to shed further light on Somerville’s life and work, including letters written to the mathematician Ada Lovelace, publisher John Murray, and astronomer and chemist John Herschel.

The letters were transcribed as part of a ‘Mary Somerville Transcribe-a-Thon’ held at Somerville College in November 2022. This event was conceived as a means of commemorating 150 years since the death of Mary Somerville, the extraordinary scientist who gave Somerville its name and deep regard for the pursuit of knowledge. We are deeply grateful to the many members of the Somerville community, including our students, staff and academics, who gave their time so generously to transcribe one or more of these letters. A full list of contributors can be found in the acknowledgements page.

We wish to express our thanks to everyone who supported this project, including the custodians of the letters, the National Library of Scotland, the Bodleian Library and The Royal Society. We also wish to thank the copyright holders who kindly granted permission to reproduce them and our transcribers for donating their skills and time so generously. Finally, we wish to express a special debt of thanks to Dr Stenhouse for the many hours spent in selecting these letters, and reviewing and checking the transcriptions. Together these many contributions have enabled us to make this small yet valuable addition to the scholarship of Mary Somerville.