Fragmens philosophiques : An Eighteenth-Century Clandestine Manuscript of Voltaire’s Apocrypha and Related Works

This study is the first comprehensive overview of the Middle and Early-Modern English alchemical texts previously attributed to the thirteenth-century English Franciscan scholar Roger Bacon. The genuine Bacon wrote some alchemical texts, but his posthumous reputation as an alchemist became legendary, and his actual alchemical material is overwhelmed by the writings falsely attributed to him. This survey of these Pseudo-Baconian alchemical writings covers both manuscript and print, collected using bibliographical resources and archival research. The texts give an overview of English alchemical topics and genres from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth. Corroborating previous work on alchemical texts, it is shown that detailed bibliographical research into the under-studied domain of English-language alchemy can enrich knowledge of the texts attributed to a certain author.