The Collected Letters of Thomas Beddoes, ed. Tim Fulford and Dahlia Porter (Cambridge University Press, 2026)

用罗伊·波特的话说，托马斯·贝多斯博士（1760-1808）是“启蒙运动后期的核心人物”，他通过演讲、印刷品和信件传播思想，对科学、医学和文学的发展产生了重大影响（波特，社会博士，第5页）。凭借他的理论出版物、实验计划，最重要的是，他庞大的通信网络，贝多斯在将启蒙思想跨越几代人、跨越国界方面发挥了主导作用，推动了从治疗医学到化学再到诗歌等领域的发展。由于他的通信网络的多样化，也因为他的信件涉及众多主题，涉及医学和哲学的原则，而他的许多英国同时代的人只知道轶事，贝多斯的900多封信呈现了一幅新的、潜在的变革图景，即在这个时期，科学、医学、文学和政治的创新是如何相互产生的。他们提供了一个引人注目的新视角，说明通信网络——无论是在英国国内还是在国际上——是如何塑造了一种“探究文化”的，在这种文化中，文学、医学、化学、哲学和社会改革的研究是一起进行的。我们的项目将出版《托马斯·贝多斯书信集》，2卷本（剑桥大学出版社，2026年）。这一版本按照最高的学术标准编辑，将包含900多封写给主要文学和科学人物的信件，包括约瑟夫·布莱克、s·t·柯勒律治、伊拉斯谟·达尔文、汉弗莱·戴维、玛丽亚·埃奇沃斯、詹姆斯·凯尔、托马斯·马尔萨斯、约翰·默里、约瑟夫·普里斯特利、詹姆斯·瓦特、托马斯·韦奇伍德。该版本将提供完整的注释文本，扩展我们对贝多斯的文学，科学和医疗网络的知识，以及他们在发展英国和欧洲的知识和技术文化的重大变化中的作用。这些变化包括科学研究的制度化，预防医学的发展，大规模数据收集的引入，浪漫主义诗歌的先驱，拉瓦锡化学和康德哲学的传入英国，以及新医学理论在欧洲的传播。我们还将在期刊上发表3篇关于Beddoes和他的通信的文章。我们将组织3场面向公众的专题讨论会，会上，贝多斯的信件及其在文学史、科学史和医学史上的意义将由富尔福德、波特和该版顾问委员会的成员（Jan Golinski、Frank James、Trevor Levere、Neil Vickers）与文学、编辑和历史学科的学者以及公众进行辩论。我们将在德·蒙福尔主办的网站上发布开放获取、免费阅读的信件抄本。

Dr. Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808) was, in Roy Porter's words, 'a central late-Enlightenment figure', a man of great influence on the development of science, medicine and literature because of his transmission of ideas in lectures, in print and in letters (Porter, Doctor of Society, p. 5). By dint of his theoretical publications, experimental programme and, most of all, his vast correspondence network, Beddoes played a leading role in moving Enlightenment thought across generations and borders, fomenting developments in fields from therapeutic medicine to chemistry to poetry. Because of his diverse network of correspondents-and because his letters range across a multitude of subjects and engage with medical and philosophical tenets that many of his British contemporaries only knew of anecdotally-Beddoes's 900+ letters present a new and potentially transformative picture of the ways in which innovations in science, medicine, literature and politics were mutually generative in this period. They provide a striking new perspective on how correspondence networks-both within Britain and internationally-shaped a 'culture of enquiry' in which investigations in literature medicine, chemistry, philosophy, and social reform were pursued together. Our project will publish The Collected Letters of Thomas Beddoes, 2 vols (Cambridge University Press, 2026). This edition, edited to the highest scholarly standards will contain over 900 letters to major literary and scientific figures including Joseph Black, S. T. Coleridge, Erasmus Darwin, Humphry Davy, Maria Edgeworth, James Keir, Thomas Malthus, John Murray, Joseph Priestley, James Watt, Thomas Wedgwood. The edition will provide fully annotated texts, expanding our knowledge of Beddoes's literary, scientific, and medical networks and their role in developing significant changes in the intellectual and technological culture of Britain and Europe. These changes include the institutionalisation of scientific research, the development of preventive medicine, the introduction of largescale data gathering, the pioneering of Romantic poetry, the introduction to Britain of Lavoiserian chemistry and Kantian philosophy, and the dissemination in Europe of new medical theory.We will also publish 3 articles in journals on Beddoes and his correspondence. We will organise 3 public-facing symposia at which the letters of Beddoes and their significance in the histories of literature, science and medicine will be debated by Fulford, Porter and members of the edition's Advisory Board (Jan Golinski, Frank James, Trevor Levere, Neil Vickers) with academics from literary, editorial and historical disciplines and with the public. We will publish letter transcriptions open access, free-to-read, on a De Montfort-hosted website.