John Dee's Library

I've started a profile page for the library of John Dee, the famed English alchemist. If anyone's interested in working on this library, let me know ... it's been very well catalogued, but since most of it is manuscripts, the majority has to be manually entered. So it's time-consuming, but very interesting stuff. I've gotten a start on it, and would be happy to write up a basic procedures guide for anyone who wants to run with it.

I am so interested in this one—but, alas, not exactly flush with free time.

Maybe we can reach out to some pagan websites... :)

In seriousness, you might want to put a message on one of LT's pagan groups.

I would love to work on this, but my free time is shrinking even further these days. However, I might be able to dip in from time to time.

(BTW, & just for the record, John Dee was an occultist, not a Pagan ;-)

I'm in favor of calling him a Scientologist if that would get us some free cataloging help.

(Speaking of which, aren't all of Mr. Hubbard's books preserved in a vault somewhere? Can we catalog them on LT, or would that result in legal action against us, either from the Scientologists or the Germans...)

Or so the Germans would have us believe!

I'm interested in giving a hand; as you can see from my library, I'm a sixteenth-century scholar, and so fairly familiar with the ground.

Cool! I'll drop you a profile note with all the goodies. Thanks!

I see that my local University library has a copy of the bibliography; I can go up this evening and take a look at it.

Excellent. I've actually been working from a detailed list derived from the bibliography, but the printed one might work out better. The first part of the list is here; then click on the PDF for "Detailed Listing: Reels 1 to 7." I got through Ashmole 369, on page 3 of that document. You can see from Dee's catalog how I was adding them/tagging, &c., but if you have any questions just drop a message here.

You no doubt know this already,but in part of one of the books in my library,"The Private Library of Dr.John Dee",is a section - Catalogus Librorum Bibliothecae Externae Mortlacensis D. Joh.Dee,A 1583,G SEPT 25 pages of his library.
Don't know if that would be of any help,but do let me know if you think it may be,

I don't have much free time at the moment, but I can dedicate a couple hours to this.

the printed one might work out better

It looks like this is a facsimile edition, so I'm not sure that's true :-)
sixteenth-century handwriting being what it is!

Ooof wowsers yeah I withdraw that comment!

We'll see, I'll report back after I've looked at it. With luck there's a transcription. :-D

#4 BTW, & just for the record, John Dee was an occultist, not a Pagan ;-)

#5 I'm in favor of calling him a Scientologist if that would get us some free cataloging help.

FWIW, there is a (very quiet) group on Alchemy:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/alchemy

and another on Hermetics:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/initiationintohermet

They might be interested in chipping in!

Just got the Roberts & Watson book on Dee's library. It is indeed a facsimile of the 1583 catalogue, but (thank goodness) it is written in an Italic hand, with plenty of free space around the writing. There are extensive notes on the books and mss.

I also found "Renaissance Man: the reconstructed libraries of European Scholars, 1450-1700, Series One: The Books and Manuscripts of John Dee, 1527-1608." This is a guide to a microfilm edition of the books in Dee's library. This may be the same as the site you referred to in #10. (About to go check ... yes, it is.)

Having spent yesterday evening acquainting myself with the catalogues, I'd like to put my dibs on Part 5, containing reels 71-90.

Are we including the Roberts & Watson numbers in the comments?

Unless they're in the detailed guides I didn't include them (I didn't have a copy of Roberts & Watson handy when I started). But feel free to do so, by all means, and we can add them to the first few later.

Thanks! I think it would be good to do so, since this bibliography seems to be the central opus in the field.

An interesting question: The good doctor is also an author; do Legacy Library authors come up in the Featured Authors module on the home pages? They are, after all, LT authors!

They don't, because otherwise things get weird (with authors like Hemingway, Plath, Faulkner, &c., it screws up the LT Author stats to have them included there). They did originally (for about a day), but people did not like it.

That said, though, I don't see any particular reason why there couldn't be a "Featured Legacy Library" module for the Home page ... Tim, a possibility for the future?

Thanks - I wasn't particularly lobbying for it, just curious.

A separate module might be fun, especially as the numbers of Legacy authors rises.

I got a link to this article from Facebook; the article has a link to library listings for John Dee. The catalog here has 61 books, but the link to the Royal College of Physicians library has "over 100."

Is there someone who would like to follow up on this?

https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/johndee

Hi, @PhaedraB
I was the lead on this Legacy Library, but got bogged down and life intervened. The list we have is much more than either what's already entered or what the RCP has. There are chunks of his collection in several libraries.

>26 staffordcastle: Thanks for answering. I know about that life stuff.

>25 PhaedraB: Further to the above, an exhibition on 'Scholar, courtier, magician : the lost library of John Dee', opens at the Royal College of Physicians today, and is on until 29 July 2016.
https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/events/scholar-courtier-magician-lost-library-john-d...

The RCP's page on 'The lost library of John Dee', https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/node/1541, includes links to the library catalogue, which returns 161 John Dee books, and to the handlist to the John Dee collection and exhibition, which divides the 'more than 100 volumes' collection into 'definitely owned by John Dee', 'probably owned by John Dee', 'may have been owned by John Dee', and 'may have been owned by John Dee, but were probably not'.

>28 Cynfelyn: Yes, I have heard about the exhibition, and would love to attend. However, I don't have the resources to travel, so I have to content myself with web voyeurism.

Hmmm, I'm going to London next summer; I must see if I can schedule that in. Thanks for the tip!