The Byrom Collection - Hardcover

Hancox, Joy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224030469 ISBN 13: 9780224030465

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 1992

Synopsis

Before he was executed for his part in the Jacobite rebellion, Siddal had lived near Manchester in a farmhouse now altered and the home of the author of this book. Curious about Siddal's silence at the trial, Joy Hancox came to believe he had gone to the gallows to protect someone else. Her investigations revealed a close connection between Siddal and his neighbour John Byrom, a respected member - along with Newton, Wren and Hans Sloane - of The Royal Society. Byrom, who was known to harbour Jacobite sympathies, invented a system of shorthand (later developed by Pitman) which might well have provided protection against any charge of heresy after he formed his Cabala Club. Already his loyalty to the Stuarts had denied him a career at Cambridge and in the Church. When Joy Hancox finally tracked down Byrom's collection of 516 drawings, scholars of several disciplines began to testify to the incalculable value of the discovery. She little expected the revelations these drawings were to yield, nor the clandestine history she was to uncover in the search for their origins. The collection spans two centuries, from the reign of Elizabeth I to that of George II, and involves the courts and noble families of Europe. Cabalistic philosophy, mysticism, freemasonry, cosmology and navigation link the drawings to the emergence of experimental science from its association with magic. The power of number and proportion is the key to the whole collection, which includes designs for medieval Templar churches, the hidden geometry of such buildings as King's College Chapel in Cambridge and Westminster Abbey, working drawings for early precision instruments and, perhaps most remarkable of all, plans for the original Globe Theatre, the Rose and five other Elizabethan playhouses.

About this title

Book Description

'Marries detective novel and intellectual history into a brilliantly absorbing read, 'Mark Archer wrote in the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH of this extraordinary account of the discovery of 516 priceless drawings collected by an eighteenth-century playboy, poet and philosopher for their remarkable insight into the emergence of science from its association with mysticism and magic.

About the Author

Joy Hancox, an Associate of the Royal Collge of Music, is also the author of a biography of John Byron called The Queen's Chameleon - 'A fascinating account', The Times.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224030469
• ISBN 13: 9780224030465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320