For those of you who are familiar with the diaries of John Dee you'll know what I'm talking about, but those who don't are probably thinking "Eh...?"
Let me quickly explain...
The Elizabethan, scientist, mathematician and all round brain box John Dee experimented with magic in an attempt to communicate with angels. The diaries of these communications were studiously kept by Dee in a series of note books. Following Dee's death some of the material ended up in the hands of Meric Casaubon who published them in 1659, essentially to 'show up' Dee as a fool and charlatan, However what Casaubon did was ensure that we would all be able to see what Dee was actually doing and Judge for ourselves the validity of his efforts.
The collected diaries and records that Casaubon had were put together and published under the title' A True and Faithful Relation of what Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits' This rather lengthy title is usually shortened to True and Faithful Relation, or just T&FR.
The Original 1659 publication does popup for sale from time to time, however its price is normally around the £4000 mark! a bit expensive. (these's currently and edition on sale via ABEbooks for £4373.19 - why 19p?? )
Thankfully facsimiles of the original also exist, but most are also out of print and have prices ranging from £150+ for the Magickal Childe reprint to £500+ for the Antonine Full leather binding.
The God awful Kissinger publications have printed a softback and hardback copy too, unfortunately they chose to reduce the size of the text making it virtually unreadable in places. (There's also an edition by Apocryphile Press however their print is even smaller than Kessinger)
As I indicated in my previous post we can now purchased Stephen Skinners excellent Dr. John Dee's Spiritual Diaries which essentially T&FR reset in a modern and highly readable typeface.
However T&FR/'JD's Spiritual Diaries' represent only a partial record of Dee's activities. The earlier efforts are missing. This is particularity a problem as the earlier diaries describe how Dee's set up is supposed to work. Meric Causabon did not have access to the earlier material, but I don't suppose he really cared. These diaries had become separated from the T&FR published material. and did not appear in print until Adam Maclean published them in mid 1980's (please view Adam's site in my links section)
Unfortunately Adam's print runs are severely limited, mainly because he hand binds the books himself, and only 250 copies were produced. consequently they now sell for £200+ at least. Adam's hand bound books are fantastic and certainly look the part. bound in leather and gold embossed (I have a couple myself) but damn hard to get a hold of!
Thankfully, in more recent times Joseph Peterson has also published an edition of Dee's earlier diaries or 'The 5 Books of Magic' as are they are collectively known. However, this effort is, to me, spoiled by the fact that the Peterson book is only available as a paper back. A real shame.
Which brings me to my next project. Namely to rebinding of a copy of The 5 Books.
This seems particularly poignant as it would make a great companion volume beside Skinner's modern reset of T&FR (Like the new Skinner edition both Mclean's and Peterson's '5 Books' are set in modern fonts)
Stage one of the project was to remove the paper/soft back cover and size up the book block of it's new cover. The image below show the progress so far
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| The work begins... |
When I'm at the next stage, covering the cover, I'll upload some more images
*Apologies to anyone who's read the above in its 'first draft' form, there were quite a few errors (grammar, spelling and missing words)
That's what happens when you start a new blog entry at 2am!*
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