The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason
Language: English
Published by HarperCollins, New York, 2003
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Saucony Book Shop, Kutztown, PA, U.S.A.Saucony Book Shop
AbeBooks seller since June 21, 2006
Condition: Used - Near fine
£ 5.84
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Ivory faux-vellum and rust paper covered boards, spine panel lettered in gold foil. Remainder mark to bottom text block edge, slight moisture contact evident along fore-edge of rear flyleaf only, otherwise new, as issued. Dust jacket as issued, now in mylar. 1st ptg., complete number line. xii,272 pp. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.
Seller Inventory # 045298
- Title
- The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason
- Author
- McCalman, Iain
- Publisher
- HarperCollins, New York
- Publication year
- 2003
- Condition
- Near Fine
- Dust jacket
- Fine
- Book Type
- Book
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0060006900
- ISBN 13
- 9780060006907
- Edition
- 1st Edition.
- Seller catalogs
- Esoteric Studies, European History, Medieval & Renaissance Studies
Who was Count Cagliostro? Was he a great healer and mystic or a dangerous charlatan whose ideas threatened to undermine the monarchies of France and Russia? Either way, Count Alessandro di Cagliostro was one of the most visible and influential men of the 18th century, overcoming poverty and humble birth to become the darling — and bane — of upper-crust Europe.
Iain McCalman brings Cagliostro and his world to life in The Last Alchemist, an outstanding work of cultural history. McCalman reveals the real person behind Cagliostro’s dazzling façade — the man who inspired Mozart and Goethe, who led an exotic form of Freemasonry, and who was banned from Russia and arrested by the Inquisition — the man who Thomas Carlyle described as “a genius of disorder waging a lone war against rational discipline.” Iain McCalman is an internationally renowned cultural historian and director of the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. He is author or editor of seven scholarly works, including the widely acclaimed Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840 and, most recently, The Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age. “Perceptive, intelligent, and — by no means least — immensely entertaining.” — Washington PostWho was the mysterious Count Cagliostro? Depending on whom you ask, he was either a great healer and mystic or a dangerous charlatan whose revolutionary notions and influences threatened to undermine the monarchies of France and Russia. Whatever else he was, Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, the leader of an exotic brand of Freemasonry, was indisputably one of the most influential and notorious figures of the latter eighteenth century, overcoming poverty and an ignoble birth to become the darling -- and bane -- of upper-crust Europe.
Internationally acclaimed historian Iain McCalman has not written a work of biography in the strictest sense; rather, he uses seven key "episodes" in Cagliostro's political and spiritual evolution to provide a dazzling panoramic portrait of eighteenth-century European culture and history. McCalman documents how Cagliostro crossed paths -- and often swords -- with the likes of Catherine the Great, Marie Antoinette, and Pope Pius VI. He was a muse to William Blake and the inspiration for both Mozart's The Magic Flute and Goethe's Faust. LouisXVI had him thrown into the Bastille for his alleged involvement in what would come to be known as "the affair of the necklace." Yet in London, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg, he established "healing clinics" for the poorest of the poor, a radical notion at that time; and his dexterity in the worlds of alchemy and spiritualism won him acclaim among the nobility across Europe.
But it was his progress through the rites of Egyptian Freemasonry -- including the Illuminati, a genuinely conspiratorial secret society dedicated to the overthrow of established religion and monarchy -- that was both his highest achievement and his undoing. In 1791, on the order of Pope Pius VI, Cagliostro was arrested for heresy. He spent the last five years of his life in solitary confinement in an Italian prison, where he died in 1795.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
"A rip-roaring biography." -- Providence Journal-Bulletin
" [A] fascinating biography . recounts the astounding adventures of [a man] both revered and reviled by ... eighteenth-century celebrities." -- Booklist
"Iain McCalman writes history which has the teasing, exciting psychological ambiguity of the best fiction."--Peter Conrad, author of MODERN TIMES, MODERN PLACES
"Perceptive, intelligent and -- by no means least -- immensely entertaining"--Washington Post
"Gracefully weaves in the politics and passions of the age....Cagliostro is [an] extraordinary figure."--New York Times
"[A] fascinating life.... Smoothly written, deeply researched, and persuasively argued."--Peter Gay, author of FREUD
"[A] rich, fantastic, devilishly romantic book ... utterly absorbing ... a charming puzzle from beginning to end."--Simon Winchester, author of KRAKATOA
"A lively bio [that] opens the files on a fascinating character--a con man for the ages."--Kirkus Reviews
"An enlightening account of the career of one of the most famous charlatans of the 18th century."--Publishers Weekly
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Saucony Book Shop
Kutztown, PA, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since June 21, 2006
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The Saucony Book Shop, located in the heart of scenic rural Berks County, epicenter of Pennsylvania German folk culture (our shop specialty), offers a full range of gently used, rare, and antiquarian books, with many volumes of scholarly merit and an unabashed emphasis on the quaint, the curious, and the utterly obscure. Hours by appointment or chance April through October, closed winters. Do drop by and browse the eclectic selection gracing our shelves, or ask our ferociously over-read staff for recommendations. If traveling from a distance, please call ahead to be sure that we're not off at another auction! Selling antiquarian books of merit since 1981. Full search and appraisal services; always keenly interested in purchasing quality used books, whether by the piece or by the bushel.…
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