John Evelyn was a savant, a horticulturalist and a man of affairs but it is as a diarist that he is best known. His reputation in that respect was long ago eclipsed by that of Samuel Pepys but extracts from Evelyn's diaries in works of popular as well as learned history have long since made his name familiar to general readers as well as to scholars.

But Evelyn deserves to have one other reputation: that of a writer of letters. His activity as a correspondent has until now been hard to assess because of the relative paucity of his letters which are in print. The 1857 edition of his diaries (edited by William Bray) contained 127 letters by Evelyn as well as a selection of those sent to him. The 1906 edition omitted twenty-four early pseudonymous letters sent to Sir Richard Browne, Evelyn's father-in-law. In more recent years Guy de la Bedoyere provided in Particular friends (Woodbridge 1997) an edition of the correspondence between Evelyn and Pepys, containing ninety-six letters by Evelyn of which only a fraction had been printed by Bray. But when Esmond de Beer, the editor of Evelyn's diaries in their one modern critical edition, completed his monumental task his attention turned not to Evelyn's correspondence but to that of John Locke.

It is only now, with the appearance of this edition of his letterbooks by Douglas Chambers and David Galbraith, that we can begin to have a clearer conception of Evelyn the correspondent. First, however, a caveat needs to be issued.

The editors note that the letterbooks (like the diary) ‘have a complex textual history, having been assembled by Evelyn over a prolonged but discontinuous period’ (i, p xxi). Where copies as sent of Evelyn's letters survive along with the entries in the letterbooks (as is the case with twenty-two of the letters to Pepys here printed) differences between the two texts often appear (i, p xix; cf Particular friends, 19). Much work on the letterbooks seems to have been done in the 1680s but the editors believe that it was started earlier, perhaps in the 1660s (i, pp. xxii–xxiv). Evelyn's own dating of some of the letters that he copied is confused (i, p. xxv). It is clear that an edition of the letterbooks is not the same as one of letters dispatched by Evelyn; we cannot always be sure that the text he entered was precisely the same as that of the letter that he sent. On the contrary we know that he was capable of altering those texts, either on purpose or by accident.

Nevertheless the letterbooks give us a good (though imperfect) idea of Evelyn the correspondent. And what a correspondence his was. The two volumes of this edition contain 810 letters by Evelyn, covering the period from April 1645 (when he was twenty-five) to 1698 (eight years before he died). The range and importance of his correspondence is remarkable. Here there are letters to (amongst others) John Cosin, Jeremy Taylor, Samuel Hartlib, Robert Boyle, William Petty, Joseph Glanvill, Samuel Pepys, Christopher Wren, William Sancroft, Thomas Tenison and Richard Bentley. The subjects covered include public affairs (in particular those of the Royal Navy), art, gardening, science and scholarship.

Not least does the correspondence printed here allow us to have a better idea of Evelyn's religious beliefs. As the editors note astutely: ‘That he was a Royalist and an active lay member of the Church of England were constants. But the meaning of these terms and their relationship to each other were subject to considerable negotiation’ (i, pp. xxviii–xxix). The young Evelyn was a Laudian. As a letter to his cousin Thomas Keightly makes clear he had experienced (as had other Laudians) the attraction of Catholicism (i. 86–9 at p. 87). His brief but intense spiritual friendship with Jeremy Taylor, one of the greatest of the Laudians, can be traced here. Taylor was a mentor to Evelyn; Evelyn a patron to Taylor. We learn of the effort of Evelyn and others to assist Taylor, who was without a regular income during the years of the Interregnum (i. 143, 176–81). To Taylor Evelyn expressed his hostility to Cromwell, the Julianus Redivivus who had shut the schools and temples but could not ‘hinder our privat intercourses and devotions where the breast is the chapel, and our Heart is the Altar etc’ (i. 160–2 at p. 161). When Taylor was imprisoned Evelyn interceded for him with the Lieutenant of the Tower (i. 222–3). No letters between the two men survive for the last six or so years of Taylor's life but his connection with the bishop remained important to Evelyn as late as 1694 when (twenty-seven years after Taylor died in Ireland) Evelyn wrote of his ‘friendly and indeed intimate correspondence’ with him (ii. 1013). He recommended Taylor's works to others or made reference to them (i. pp. xlviii, 548, 578; ii. 808).

Evelyn's abiding interest in religion and theology emerges also in his letters to other correspondents. He wrote critically of the biblical scholarship of the Independent John Owen (i. 244–9). He wrote to Robert Boyle about seraphic love (i. 260–4). For Boyle as for Taylor Evelyn's admiration was constant. In 1696 he wrote at length of Boyle's learning, piety and way of life (ii. 1079–84). In these pages both a broadening and a narrowing of Evelyn's religious sympathies become apparent. The early Latitudinarian John Wilkins was a correspondent; Evelyn commended to him a book by Tillotson (i. 411–12 at p. 411). In the last decade or so of his life Evelyn, the sometime Laudian, contrasted ‘the moderate (and I think) wiser Church of England men’ (i.e. the Latitudiarians) with those ‘of the higher straine’ (i. 922). He read Locke on religion with approbation (ii. 1028) but was also aware of Stillingfleet's criticisms of the philosopher (ii. 1111).

The narrowing of those sympathies is evident in the development of Evelyn's attitude to Catholicism In 1670 he wrote to the Catholic priest Patrick Maginn to controvert transubstantiation but he did so in a restrained manner, relying on Taylor's work (i. 502–6). A more visceral hostility to Catholicism can be found nine years later when Evelyn wrote to Sidney Godolphin at the start of the Exclusion crisis (i. 603–6). By 1682 he was writing to John Fell that the biblical criticism of the Oratorian Richard Simon represented ‘amore pernicious plot, than any has yet alarm'd us’ (ii. 681–3 at p. 682). In the following year he told Lady Berkeley that Catholic doctrine was ‘disloyal and not to be endured by Christians, much lesse by a son (or daughter) of the Church of England’ (ii. 720–1 at p. 721).

This edition is handsomely produced and well illustrated. The letters are presented clearly; Evelyn's own deletions are indicated; letters in languages other than English are translated; a glossary is provided. The notes are extensive, and in general accurate. Only a few errors have been observed. Thomas Keightly matriculated at Peterhouse in 1636; he did not (contrary to the editors) graduate from there that year (i. 78). Willliam Juxon was seventy-nine in 1661, not seventy-one (i. 321). The reference to William Sanderson (i. 441) should probably be to Robert Sanderson. Such blemishes are minor as well as rare. This work is (one writes with little fear of contradiction) the most important contribution to the study of John Evelyn since de Beer finished his edition of the diary. It is also a major addition to our knowledge of Stuart history. Esmond de Beer was once described as having been not only ‘the prince of textual editors, he was also the king of indexers' (Michael Strachan, Esmond de Beer (1895–1990) scholar and benefactor’, Norwich 1995, 25). The editors of this work merit comparable praise.