First published in 1652, this compilation of English alchemical literature was collected and annotated by Elias Ashmole. The book made available many works that had previously existed only in privately held manuscripts, and features alchemical verse from Thomas Norton, George Ripley, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Dastin, Abraham Andrews, Thomas Charnock, William Bloomefield, Edward Kelley, John Dee, Thomas Robinson, William Backhouse, John Gower, John Lydgate, W. Redman, as well as several unknown authors. Individual plates from the volume are digitized here, with additional item-level description available for select plates.
Quote of the Day
“For the Aquafortis being abstracted, the Body becometh meltable as before, and that Water abides not with, nor subsists in the Body, as its radical moisture. The Bodies indeed are corroded, but not dissolved; and by how much more they are corroded they are so much more estranged from a Metallick kind. These Solutions therefore are not the foundation of the Art of Transmuta∣tion, but the impostures rather of Sophistical Alchymists, who think that this Sacred Art is hid in them.”
Bernard Trevisan
The Answer of Bernardus Trevisanus, to the Epistle of Thomas of Bononia
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