The Life of Dr. John Dee (1527 - 1608)

Charlotte Fell Smith

• Publisher: Bonhopai Books
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781779794338
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

The Life of Dr. John Dee (1527–1608) by Charlotte Fell Smith is the first full-length scholarly biography of one of England's most enigmatic and compelling figures — mathematician, astronomer, magician, and visionary adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. Drawing on Dee's surviving journals, letters, and manuscripts, Fell Smith paints a portrait at once factual and fascinating: the story of a man who straddled the boundary between the scientific and the supernatural at the dawn of the modern age.

Born during the English Renaissance, Dr. John Dee embodied the intellectual ambition of his century. He translated Euclid, promoted exploration, advised Elizabeth's court on navigation, and dreamed of uniting science and faith into a universal philosophy. Yet his name became forever linked with the occult — with alchemy, angelic communication, and the mysterious "scrying" sessions conducted with his associate Edward Kelley. Fell Smith's account follows Dee from his brilliance at Cambridge to the long years of hardship and disillusion that shadowed his later life, revealing the human side of a man alternately revered as a genius and condemned as a sorcerer.

What makes The Life of Dr. John Dee enduringly valuable is its balance of scholarship and narrative grace. Fell Smith neither sensationalizes nor sanitizes her subject; instead, she restores Dee as a symbol of the Renaissance spirit — a seeker of hidden harmonies, yearning to reconcile reason and revelation.

 For readers of history, esotericism, or biography, this book remains a cornerstone study of one of England's greatest and strangest minds — a man who sought, in the stars and in the spirit, the ultimate key to knowledge. 

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• CHAPTER I—BIRTH AND EDUCATION
• CHAPTER II—IMPRISONMENT AND AUTHORSHIP
• CHAPTER III—MORTLAKE
• CHAPTER IV—JANE DEE
• CHAPTER V—THE SEARCH FOR A MEDIUM
• CHAPTER VI—EDWARD KELLEY
• CHAPTER VII—THE CRYSTAL GAZERS
• CHAPTER VIII—MADIMI
• CHAPTER IX—A FOREIGN JOURNEY
• CHAPTER X—PROMISES AND VISIONS
• CHAPTER XI—KRAKÓW
• CHAPTER XII—FROM KRAKÓW TO PRAGUE
• CHAPTER XIII—A DREAM OF GOLD
• CHAPTER XIV—THE CASTLE OF TREBONA
• CHAPTER XV—THE END OF THE PARTNERSHIP
• CHAPTER XVI—THE END OF KELLEY
• CHAPTER XVII—RETURN TO ENGLAND
• CHAPTER XVIII—A ROYAL COMMISSION
• CHAPTER XIX—DEE’S LIBRARY
• CHAPTER XX—ADIEU TO COURTS AND COURTING
• CHAPTER XXI—MANCHESTER
• CHAPTER XXII—COLLEGE AFFAIRS
• CHAPTER XXIII—LAST DAYS
• APPENDIX I—THE DESCENDANTS OF JOHN DEE
• APPENDIX II—BIBLIOGRAPHY