[Rarebooks] For Sale: Nice large reprint of Dee's "Relation"

[Norman Kane]

DEE, Dr. JOHN (A mathematician of Great Fame in 
Q. Eliz. and King James their Reignes.) A TRUE 
AND FAITHFUL RELATION OF WHAT PASSED FOR MANY 
YEARS BETWEEN Dr. JOHN DEE . . . AND SOME SPIRITS 
. . .OUT OF THE ORIGINAL COPY, WRITTEN WITH Dr. 
DEES OWN HAND: KEPT IN THE LIBRARY OF SIR THO. 
COTTON, Kt. BARONET. WITH A PREFACE . . . BY 
MERIC. CASAUBON, D.D.  London: Printed by D. 
Maxwell, for T. Garthwait, 1659, (Reprinted, 
Antonine Pub. Co., [Glasgow, 1974.]  One of 1000 
copies "bound in cloth and jacketed," and signed 
by the publisher.  Approx. 13 X 8 1/2 inches, 
original linen with leather labels, boxed, in the 
original pictorial dust wrapper. A nice copy. 
(The John Dee Society sums up Dee's 
accomplishments as follows: "Visionary of the 
British Empire; coined the word Brittannia and 
developed a plan for the British Navy;  The first 
to apply Euclidean geometry to navigation; built 
the instruments to apply Euclid; trained the 
first great navigators; developed the maps; 
charted the Northeast and Northwest Passages;  An 
angel conjuror with his sidekick Kelley; the 
angels told him what Britain would have in their 
eventual empire; used an obsidian show stone 
which came from the Aztecs/Mayans and rests in 
the British Museum along with his conjuring table 
which contains the Enochian Alphabet he used as 
angel language;  Philosopher to Queen Elizabeth; 
did her horoscope; determined her coronation date 
astrologically; she came to visit him on her 
horse;  Founder of the Rosicrucian Order, the 
protestant response to the Jesuits; An alchemist, 
hermeticist, cabalist, adept in esoteric and 
occult lore;  Translator of Euclid and wrote the 
famous Mathematical Preface, mapping mathematical 
studies for the future, a kind of system of the 
sciences based on math;  Put a hex on the Spanish 
Armada which is why there was bad weather and 
England won;  Commissioned by Elizabeth to 
establish the legal foundation for colonizing 
North America; went back to Madoc, a Welsh Prince 
who took a group over to New England in the 
middle ages and established the first colony, and 
intermarried with the Indians, but with little or 
no historical trace but for the 
legend;  Instrumental in theatre arts and 
architecture;  Shakespeare depicted him as 
Prospero, and King Lear; Sold the Voynich 
Manuscript, the most mysterious, a cipher as yet 
to be deciphered--"the Everest of cipher 
studies"--to the Holy Roman Emperor--Rudolph 
II--for a lot of gold. Resides at Yale in the 
Beineke Library. Probably an herbal and an 
almanac by Anthony Askham; Had the greatest 
library in England over 4,000 books.")
"About ten years after Dee's death, the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Antiquarian>antiquarian 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/Robert_Bruce_Cotton>Robert 
Cotton purchased land around Dee's house and 
began digging in search of papers and artefacts. 
He discovered several manuscripts, mainly records 
of Dee's angelic communications. Cotton's son 
gave these manuscripts to the scholar 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//wiki/M%C3%A9ric_Casaubon>Méric 
Casaubon, who published them in 1659, together 
with a long introduction critical of their 
author, as A True & Faithful Relation . . ." (Wikipedia)   $400.00
(Trade Discount Available)

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THE AMERICANIST (ABAA),
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Telephone: 919-967-9287 email: nkane at kanebooks.com.
Proprietor: Norman Kane (50 years as an antiquarian bookseller.)