Woolhouse, R. S. & Francks, R. (transl. & ed.) - Leibniz’s ‘New System’ and Associated Contemporary Texts

Until 1710, with the publication of his book-length Essais de théodicée, the ideas of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646- 1716) were publicly available only through his articles in learned journals such as the Latin-language Acta eruditorum (Leipzig, from 1682) and the French-language Journal des savants (Paris, from 1666),¹ Nouvelles de la République des lettres (Amsterdam, from 1684), Histoire des ouvrages des savants (Rotterdam, from 1687), and Mémoires pour l'histoire des sciences et des beaux arts (Trévoux, from 1701).² These did not always have a large European-wide audience: Barber points out that 'Leibniz seems to have assumed that an article in the Acta alone [which he himself helped found] was inadequate as a means of reaching the French public; his first article in the Nouvelles de la République des lettres is a translation of one in the Acta'.³