Selected Writings

• The first entirely new translation of Galileo's major writings for more than fifty years.
• Includes selections from all Galileo's important writings on science and his astronomical discoveries: a virtually complete text of his first bestseller, A Sidereal Message, a substantial part of his masterpiece, the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, and extracts from the Letters on the Sunspots, The Assayer, and the Two New Sciences.
• All Galileo's contributions to the debate on science and religion, including the letters to Benedetto Castelli and the Grand Duchess Christina, and Galileo's notes which were unpublished in his lifetime.
• The key documents from Galileo's trial before the Inquisition in 1633.
• Mark Davie's new translations capture both the clarity and attractive vigour of Galileo's prose.
• Galileo scholar William R. Shea's introduction gives a clear, lively overview of Galileo's career and achievements.
• Notes explain the scientific and philosophical background, enabling the reader to understand Galileo's arguments in the context of their time.

Readership: Readers interested in the history of science, in Galileo and his discoveries, and the ongoing debate on science and religion; students of history of science, seventeenth-century history and the scientific revolution, cultural studies, religion and science, the Inquisition.

Galileo

Mark Davie has taught Italian at the Universities of Liverpool and Exeter. He has published studies on various aspects of Italian literature, mainly in the period from Dante to the Renaissance, and has edited Tasso's The Liberation of Jerusalem, tr. Max Wickert, for Oxford World's Classics. He is particularly interested in the relations between learned and popular culture, and between Latin and the vernacular, in Italy in the Renaissance.

William R. Shea is the author of several books including Galileo's Intellectual Revolution (Macmillan, 1972), Galileo in Rome (OUP, 2003), and Galileo Observed (Science History, 2006), the last two co-authored with Mariano Artigas.

"includes substantial explanatory notes and a useful introduction, but what really brings it alive is the readable modern language of the translations ... it makes [Galileo's] ideas accessible ... and available to a much wider audience." - Astronomy and Geophysics

"This book is an absolute joy." - The Observatory

Introduction
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Galileo
A Sidereal Message
Letters on the Sunspots
First Letter
From the Third Letter
Science and Religion
Letter to Don Benedetto Castelli
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina
Letter from Cardinal Bellarmine to Paolo Antonio Foscarini
Observations on the Copernican Theory
From The Assayer
Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems
First Day
From the Second Day
From the Third Day
Fourth Day
The Trial
Two New Sciences
From the First Day
From the Third Day
Explanatory Notes
Index