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The book is a comprehensive study of British travel in the United Provinces during the Stuart Period and largely based on journals and correspondence never before published. After a discussion of travel journals and correspondence as a literary genre with conventions of its own, the book focuses on the more concrete activities of the tourist: transport, accommodation and sightseeing. A large number of guidebooks provided the necessary information and helped the tourist to write his observations on Holland and the Dutch. Letters by Edward Browne (1644-1708), passages from the journal of John Locke (1632-1704) and the financial accounts of the third Earl of Orrery (1670-1703) take the reader through most of the provinces and give a first-hand impression of what travel was like for various categories of tourists in those days. This book is indispensable for all scholars of Anglo-Dutch relations in this period who are interested in learning about day to day experiences of Britons visiting Holland.

The book discusses the form and contents of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century travel journals and correspondence together with other aspects of tourism, such as transport, accommodation and sightseeing. It contains annotated texts by Edward Browne and John Locke written while on tour in Holland.

Huygens: The Man Behind the Principle is the story of the great seventeenth-century Dutch mathematician and physicist, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695). As the first complete biography ever written this book describes in detail how Huygens arrived at discoveries and inventions that are often wrongly ascribed to Newton. Huygens played a key role in the 'scientific revolution', and the Huygens Principle on the wave theory of light helped establish his reputation. The discovery of Saturn's rings and the invention of the pendulum clock made him so famous that he was invited to be the first director of the French Academy of Science, but his life as director teetered on the edge of powerlessness. Despite Huygens' many achievements no complete biography has previously been published in English. This book gives scientists and historians the opportunity to learn more about all aspects of Huygens' life while bringing his story to a wider audience.

This book is the result of patient research in eighteenth-century family archives. Particularly those of Belle de Zuylen's contemporaries likely to have met her. Just over twenty years after the publication of her Oeuvres completes and the subsequent biographies by Pierre and Simone Dubois and Cecil P. Courtney, this book offers much new material and places her early work in the context of that of her friends. Being in touch with other people was essential for Belle de Zuylen, whose correspondence now also includes two letters when she was seventeen and desperately in love. Among the new poems there is a fable written after a quarrel with friends, whose views on the matter are also published. Another important poem is Belle's long and witty 'epistle' in answer to complimentary verses by the editor of the journal that printed her story Le Noble. One of the many reactions by friends to this partly autobiographical tale in which Julie d'Arnonville elopes with a man her father does not approve of, came from an offended 'marquis d'Arnonville', who enclosed a lengthy comment on the story. Most of the material was found among the papers of Baron Gijsbert Jan van Hardenbroek, a colleague of Belle's father in the provincial administration. From his letters and memorandums it appears that for many years he was in love with Belle. When he finally asked her to marry him, she had already decided to leave Holland, where she had long known she would never be happy.

Diplomats reported in detail on Voltaire's dealings with Johannes van Duren over the 'Anti-Machiavel', and on his unsuccessful diplomatic mission to Berlin in 1743. We include an unknown version of Voltaire's 'Sur un usage très utile établi en Hollande', and discuss at some length his 'Sommaire des droits de Sa Majesté, le roi de Prusse sur Herstal', first printed as a pamphlet in The Hague, and published in the 'Leydse Courant' before it appeared in the 'Gazette d'Amsterdam', the 'Gazette de Leyde' and the 'Gazette d'Utrecht'. As to the 'Anti-Machiavel', the first edition to comprise variants was not published by Van Duren, but by Pierre Paupie under the false imprints of Colomb (Marseille) and Lacaze (Amsterdam). With regard to Voltaire's very popular 'Vers à M. Van Haren', composed in June 1743, we publish a letter by Voltaire, written in Dutch.

This book documents what newspapers, literary journals and private individuals in Holland wrote about Voltaire between 1746 and 1778. Like elsewhere in Europe, he was admired for his literary genius but detested by orthodox Christians for his disrespect of revealed religion. In this book these views are represented by Gerard Roos, the translator of Zadig, Socrate and L'Homme aux 40 ecus, and the reverend Petrus Hofstede. For Jean Rousset de Missy, the editor of Voltariana and Les Mensonges imprimes, Voltaire was also a selfish cheat who did not keep his promises to publishers. In L'Epilogueur moderne Rousset frequently attacked him in connection with Abrege de l'histoire universelle by Jean Neaulme. Among the documents discovered while working on this book are the letter Voltaire wrote to the grand pensionary of Holland after the public burning of his Dictionnaire philosophique, and a second review of Oeuvres de Maupertuis. The book concludes with a bibliography of Voltaire translations into Dutch, many of them published in literary journals.

Novelle van de 18e eeuwse schrijfster over een adellijk meisje dat aan haar milieu probeert te ontsnappen, alsmede een essay over boek en schrijfster.