THE QUEEN'S CONJURER by Benjamin Woolley
The Science & Magic of Dr. John Dee, Advisor to Queen Elizabeth 1
Hardcover
$25.00
The Dawn of the Renaissance, Embodied in the Story of One Man
From the inside jacket -
It was an age of great change. By the sixteenth century, the years of darkness were slowly giving way to the light of a new intellectual curiosity, which had explorers calling on new shores, scientists musing again about our place in the heavens, and poets rewriting what it means to be human.
From among the great names that entered into history from this period, one had been lost: Dr. John Dee. This single shadowy and complex figure embodied all the conflicts of the age -- between science and superstition, Papist and Protestant, faith and future, medieval and modern. Dee was a man of astounding learning, whose influence ranged from esoteric philosophy to practical politics. It was said that his vast personal library -- perhaps the largest and finest in all of Europe at the time -- contained the entire Renaissance within it. A trusted advisor to Queen Elizabeth, Dee plotted her astrological chart and selected her coronation day. His mathematics anticipated Newton by nearly a century; his mapmaking and navigation made possible great voyages of exploration, such as Martin Frobisher's ill-fated journeys in search of the Northwest Passage. The very idea of a British empire may be credited to Dee.
Yet these intellectual and scientific achievements were matched by his passions for alchemy, astrology, and mysticism, and Dee's relentless pursuit of spirits and angels proved his undoing. The tragic story of the latter portion of his life -- his fall from grace at the hands of a charismatic and diabolical trickster -- is a riveting spectacle of obsession and betrayal, of intellectual insight and blind faith. Despite his once-lofty position and his prodigious intellect, Dee died in poverty and obscurity, pitied, reviled, and ultimately forgotten.
The Queen's Conjurer is Benjamin Woolley's engrossing account of the rise and decline of this brilliant and remarkable man, who left an indelible mark in so many different realms. Blending biography with superb narrative skills, Woolley tells the story not just of the man, but of a pivotal moment in history.
Benjamin Woolley, a writer and broadcaster, covers both the arts and the sciences. His previous books include Virtual Worlds, an exploration of virtual reality, and The Bride of Science, a biography of Byron's brilliant daughter, Ada Lovelace.