Publishers and Gendered Readership in English-Language Editions of Il Newtonianismo per le Dame

Context: Popular Newtonianism in Eighteenth-Century England

Very few people in England read Descartes, whose works indeed are now useless. On the other side, but a small number peruse those of Sir Isaac, because to do this the student must be deeply skilled in the mathematics . . . notwithstanding this, these great men are the subject of everyone’s discourse. Sir Isaac Newton is allowed every advantage, whilst Descartes is not indulged a single one …. Newton is here as the Hercules of fabulous story, to whom the ignorant ascribed all the feats of ancient heroes.¹

Although most would agree that Sir Isaac Newton’s reputation for his intellectual labors approached a Herculean status in eighteenth-century popular culture, Newton’s writings themselves presented a particular challenge to popularization because of the imbalance between the difficulty of his mathematical calculations and the popularity of their author. Few literate people were so “deeply skilled in the mathematics” as to fully comprehend the Principia (1687); even so, the English had enough to say about Newton and René Descartes that the two remained central subjects of discussion. Although the English recognized that they should be able to debate the merits of Newton and Descartes, they lacked the foundational knowledge to do so authoritatively and consequently relied on anecdotal and hyperbolic evidence. As Voltaire’s description of the Newton-Descartes postmortem feud implies, the eighteenth-century English mythologized Newton as part of their nationalist pride. The idea that Newton could be “allowed every advantage” against Descartes, without debate or argument, derives from Newton’s status as one “to whom the ignorant ascribe all the feats of ancient heroes.” This paradox, in which a nation that took pride in its scientific achievements championed those achievements without understanding them, undergirds this essay. Here, I trace one aspect of the English prose popularization of Newtonian natural philosophy across the eighteenth century and find it—to borrow the Herculean metaphor—to be a many-headed Hydra on its own.

The absence of expertise that Voltaire described explains why popularizations of science found such a stronghold in the English marketplace; I proceed to show how Newtonian natural philosophy was narrated to the English through a diverse array of publishing practices as well as through the published works themselves, using an example that has been treated as far from diverse, Francesco Algarotti’s Il Newtonianismo per le Dame (Naples, 1737). Il Newtonianismo per le Dame addressed the diverse audience for eighteenth-century natural philosophy by connecting Newtonianism to pleasurable entertainment and by explicitly engaging an audience of women. I examine the differences in the varied English-language editions of Newtonianism for Ladies, published between 1739 and 1772.

Much as the English frequently discussed the works and ideas of Newton and Descartes without reading them, scholars likewise have written about the English editions of Algarotti’s Il Newtonianismo per le Dame without comparing them, thus treating them as essentially interchangeable, or even, essentially identical editions. For example, in an otherwise excellent article on Algarotti and Emilie du Châtelet, Sarah Hutton describes the variations in Italian editions from the 1730s through the 1750s but mistakenly works under the assumption that later English editions were identical to the first translation by Elizabeth Carter in 1739.² Mirella Agorni erroneously describes these editions as simply “reprints” of Carter’s translation.³Newtonianism for Ladies was not a single English text that helped translate Newtonian science to a general readership composed of both women and men. In fact, the differences between eighteenth-century English-language editions of Newtonianism for Ladies were, I argue, crucial. Not only did these variations reflect publishers’ responses to different generations of female and male readers, they also revealed distinct shifts in the landscape of eighteenth-century British popular science, much more than has been recognized by recent scholars.⁴ In contrast to Hutton’s explanation that variations in Algarotti’s Italian editions were designed by publishers “to disguise the fact that [ Algarotti’s] elegant phrases contained unpalatable opinions about the nature of the universe,” my examination shows a...