Anke Timmermann’s monograph on alchemical poetry has just been published by Brill.
Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry identifies and investigates a corpus of anonymous recipes for the philosophers’ stone dating from the fifteenth century, some of which may be familiar to readers of this blog from their appearance in Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum. The critical editions and complex histories of these alchemica, in plain and illuminated manuscripts, as anonyma and in attribution to famous authors, and in historical book collections provide new perspectives on the role of recipes in English culture.
Apart from acquiring a copy through well-known virtual and actual outlets, you may also soon consult the book via Open Access in the Knowledge Unlatched Pilot. Check out the Knowledge Unlatched, the Pilot programme (library subscriptions still available!) and interviews with authors (including Anke Timmermann) for this week’s Open Access week here: http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Elaine Leong (October 17, 2013). Verse and Transmutation. The Recipes Project. Retrieved April 29, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/tcoi