“LIGHT AGREETH NOT WITH DARKNESSE, NOR VERTUE WITH VICE”: FIRST EDITION OF CASAUBON’S TRUE AND FAITHFUL RELATION OF JOHN DEE, 1659, THE HUTH COPY

CASAUBON, Meric. A True and Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King James and their Regnes) and Some Spirits… London: T. Garthwait, 1659. Folio (9 by 13-1/2 inches), 19th-century full brown morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spine and boards, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt.

First edition of this notorious record of mathematician and astronomer John Dee’s conversations with angels, complete with engraved frontispiece portraits, 3 engraved plates (one folding) and in-text woodcut diagrams. From the famed library of Henry Huth, with his bookplate.

A 1545 graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge, Dee studied on the continent with some of the best scientists of his day, including Gemma Frisius and Gerhardus Mercator. He edited the first edition in English of Euclid (1570), providing most of the annotations and footnotes, additionally, “for more than 25 years Dee acted as adviser to various English voyages of discovery. His treatises on navigation and navigational instruments were deliberately kept in manuscript; most have not survived” (DSB). What Dee is most remembered for today, however, are his occult interests, which, combined with his undoubted scientific ability, gave him access to the highest levels of European royalty. Elizabeth I consulted him; much of his time in Europe was spent in consultation with kings and emperors, and he declined numerous lucrative appointments. Conjurer Edward Kelley would act as a “scryer” with Dee’s crystal balls, communicating messages from angelic beings to Dee; to this day, it is unclear to what extent either of them were consciously deceptive, although it now seems evident that the pious Dee was, if anything, being duped by Kelley. (Kelley would end his days as a prisoner of Emperor Rudolf II, infuriated at Kelley’s refusal to turn base metals into gold as he had promised.) The source for the material in A True and Faithful Relation comes from manuscripts unearthed from the ground around Dee’s house by antiquarian Robert Cotton that purport to give transcriptions of Dee and Kelley’s angelic communications. Cotton gave the manuscripts to historian Meric Casaubon; 50 years after Dee’s death, Casaubon’s 1659 publication of True and Faithful Relation proved surprisingly popular: Lowndes notes that “this work made a great noise on its publication.” Lowndes, 611. Wing D-811. From the library of Henry Huth, with his bookplate. The famed Huth Library was one of the greatest rare and antiquarian collections of the 19th century; it was sold in a series of auctions between 1911 and 1920.

Plates fine, text generally quite fresh and fine, with a bit of marginal dampstaining to last few leaves and occasional scattered light foxing. An excellent copy with exceptional provenance.