Australian scholar Jamie Kassler has devoted much of her academic life to the study of Roger North's writings. Her North biography, published with Ashgate in 2009, received lavish praise, and the present volume sets forth her painstaking analysis of North's ideas and influence. At the heart of Seeking Truth are five sets of manuscript fragments, ranging from single paragraphs to dozens of pages, where we find Roger North – primarily known as a biographer and musical theorist – coming to grips with the works of Isaac Newton. Kassler demonstrates how North's philosophical methodology eventually led him to initiate a correspondence in 1706 with Samuel Clarke, the famous philosopher and theologian who had just translated Newton's Opticks into Latin and would debate Gottfried Leibniz shortly afterwards. As such, Clarke was the perfect adversary for the sort of debate that North sought, modelled on the juridical method in which he was well versed. Clarke also found himself the recipient of a second series of letters by North, in 1713, discussing some of his own theological opinions.

The book's first three chapters present the reader with manuscript material which Kassler subsequently discusses, using a wealth of other manuscript sources in order to embed the material in their proper Northian setting. The initial correspondence between North and Clarke deals with various Newtonian concepts: absolute and relative motion, the possibility of a vacuum, and the nature of Newton's mathematical philosophy. North's private notes and letters provide a unique view into the mind of an educated gentleman who seeks to understand Newton's natural philosophy, yet at the same time strongly adheres to Cartesianism. Clearly, North is not impressed by Newton's ideas:

The other side of the correspondence highlights Clarke's ‘Newtonian Soul’, to employ a Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth epithet. In unequivocal terms Clarke refutes North's objections, considering most of his analysis ‘very great mistake[s] in tota materia’ (p. 148). The final two chapters contain an extensive introduction followed by various manuscript transcriptions related to North's 1713 correspondence with Clarke. Here we witness North struggling with Clarke's thinly veiled anti-Trinitarianism, a view shared by Newton, though not openly.

There are some issues with how Kassler presents North's materials. The book starts off with ‘some preliminaries’, plunging straight into a theoretical discussion and leaving the reader rather bewildered as to what this is all about. Her analysis of the North–Clarke debate seems at times rather artificial and the connections between the edited material and the author's commentary are often elusive. Kassler instead introduces the reader to new materials rather than exploring the preceding manuscripts, drawing upon her extensive knowledge of North's work. Although these connections are valuable as such, it leads her to ignore so much of the materials she so painstakingly transcribed, which feels rather unsatisfactory.

Unfortunately, Kassler's idiosyncratic use of abbreviations and system of internal referencing, the minute manuscript details she provides, and the sheer number of footnotes she employs can be rather overwhelming, if not at times extremely tedious. The preliminaries that are meant to guide the reader through the rest of the book, though providing valuable information about the manuscripts and Kassler's editorial policies, are incredibly dense. To the non-initiated, North remains an intangible figure – the chapter titled ‘Introducing Roger North’ does not live up to its name, and one will search in vain for such basic details as North's birthdate. Also, and rather unfortunately for a volume that is so thoroughly devoted to editing, the book itself suffers from editorial flaws, with substantial redundancies and typos, and even a missing plate. What I found most worrying, though, is the absence of any reference to works by Robert Iliffe or Stephen Snobelen, both eminent historians of Samuel Clarke's and Isaac Newton's metaphysics and theology. The reference section in general shows very little recent scholarship.

For North aficionados, this book is still a must-read, despite its obvious shortcomings. Kassler provides the reader with extremely valuable manuscript materials, accompanied by her insightful analysis of the development of North's natural-philosophical and religious ideas, and should best be read alongside her North biography and related materials. As a last suggestion, I would have welcomed a digital edition of the manuscripts, in both their diplomatic and their Kasslerian transcriptions. This would have allowed the reader access to the wealth of material that is contained in Roger North's writings, and Kassler's interpretation thereof. It would also have made a superior platform for the sort of back-and-forward referencing that Kassler so much enjoys. After all, this is the twenty-first century.