JOHN DEE’S COLUMBIAN ENCOUNTER

Abstract

On at least one occasion between 1571 and 1583 John Dee encountered Christopher Columbus. The medium was Columbus’s son Ferdinand, and they met in the margins of Ferdinand’s famous History […] of the Life & Deeds of the Admiral Christopher Columbus – one of the earliest and most important accounts of Columbus’s encounter with the New World.¹ Dee purchased the work sometime after its publication in 1571, and he read and annotated it carefully.² In 1583 the book was entered in his library catalogue, with a slightly garbled title.³ It ultimately made its way into the British Library, where I stumbled upon it in the summer of 1994.⁴