John Dee's Diary, Catalogue of Manuscripts and Selected Letters

These editions (1842–1920) are fascinating for the immediacy of John Dee's accounts of his life as a Renaissance scholar.

John Dee (1527–1608), scientist and manuscript collector, lost his library in a burglary in 1583, and died in poverty. This reissue contains editions of Dee's diaries by Halliwell (1842) and Bailey (1880), his personal library inventories (James, 1920), and his appeal to Elizabeth I for financial help (Crossley, 1851).John Dee (1527–1608), popularly remembered as an alchemist and spiritualist, was an enthusiastic scholar specialising in mathematics and astronomy, and collected manuscripts, early printed books and scientific instruments. Despite meeting Elizabeth I in person, he never progressed in the Church, and died in poverty. The four selections from his writings reissued here show Dee painstakingly listing his books before a journey to Europe, and appealing to the Queen for help when, after a catastrophic burglary at his library and the destruction of his laboratory equipment, his pay also failed to arrive. J. O. Halliwell (1842) reproduces the full text of Dee's diaries with an index; James Crossley (1851) transcribes Dee's appeals to the Queen; Bailey's book (1880), of which only 20 copies were printed, contains a full commentary on the last five years of the diaries; and M. R. James (1920) researches the fate of Dee's books over the centuries.