Jennifer M. Rampling, "The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

The University of Chicago Press Podcast · Feb 8, 2021 · 1h 2m

A four-hundred-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice. Tracing the development of alchemy in England from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, Jennifer M. Rampling illuminates the role of alchemical reading and experimental practice in the broader context of national and scientific history.

Using new manuscript sources, she shows how practitioners like George Ripley, John Dee, and Edward Kelley, as well as many previously unknown alchemists, devised new practical approaches to alchemy while…