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RENAISSANCE MAN:
The Reconstructed Life of European Scholars, 1450-1700
Series One: The Books and Manuscripts of John Dee, 1527-1608

Part 9: John Dee's Manuscripts and Annotated Books from the Trinity College, Cambridge and the Bodleian Library, Oxford

The aim of this project is to reconstruct one of the greatest libraries of Renaissance England and, in doing so, to enable us to better understand renaissance culture.

The choice of the library at Mortlake established by John Dee (1527-1608), mathematician, scientist, advisor to court, astrologer, and bibliophile, was obvious – famous during his lifetime, the library was visited and utilised by many of his contemporaries including Queen Elizabeth, Walter Raleigh, Martin Frobisher, Edward Dyer, Robert Dudley, Philip Sidney, Thomas Digges, William Herbert, Francis Walsingham, Oronce Finé, Bishop Bonner, Thomas Benger, and Thomas Harriot.

What is more, Dee’s library was catalogued in 1557 and 1583 and the work of Roberts & Watson (John Dee’s Library Catalogue, 1990) and later scholars has helped to identify many of the original volumes. It is now known that the library consisted of 2,317 printed books and 368 manuscripts. Nearly all of the manuscripts and 288 of the printed works have been identified.

By bringing together the actual volumes from Dee’s library we can see how books were read and how knowledge was practically employed. We can judge the comparative influence of Arabic and Classical thinkers on Elizabethan society. We can ponder the division of the library into printed and manuscript texts and can realise how small the quantity of books in English was compared with the library as a whole.

Part 9 is the final part of this project, bringing together more significant manuscripts and annotated printed books which were once in John Dee’s library. The material is sourced from Trinity College, Cambridge and the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

The marginalia in texts by authors such as Euclid, Ptolemy, Avicenna and Conrad Gesner show us how Dee interacted with his books and organised knowledge in a great storehouse that was at the disposal of explorers, politicians and other leading figures in Elizabethan society.

With the publication of Part 9 we have now reassembled 70% of the manuscripts and 85% of the printed works known to have been in John Dee’s library and we can begin to piece together the conceptual framework of Dee and his contemporaries. We can better understand their influences and their world view.



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