ABSTRACT
In the late 1640s, the workdiaries are literary. The principal component comprises extracts from the French chivalric romances which formed Robert Boyle's staple reading during his adolescence, and which inspired several of his earliest writings. In 1650, the content of the workdiaries changes decisively. The literary obiter dicta disappear, never to reappear, and instead the content of the workdiaries comprises recipes, mostly for herbal remedies for ailments from which Boyle and his friends suffered, supplied by such associates of Boyle's as Benjamin Worsley and Gerard Boate. Some of the workdiaries from this period are folded up and worn, as if Boyle carried them round with him in his pocket. There are various workdiaries – consciously headed 'the sixteenth century', and so on – which give reports of experiments that Boyle carried out in very similar terms to those of the 1660s.
