William Harrison Ainsworth, the popular Victorian historical novelist, had a long association with Chetham’s Library. Born in King Street, Manchester, in 1805, Ainsworth attended Manchester Grammar School on the library’s...
By the 1570s, John Dee had established at his home of Mortlake what has been described as the largest and most diverse library in Elizabethan England, containing—according to Dee—three thousand...
When John Dee initially sought appointment as the warden of a collegiate church following his travels on the continent, Manchester was far from his mind. Instead, he had fixed his...
At around midday on 15 February 1596, following an arduous journey by road and water, John Dee arrived in Tudor Manchester. Five days later, he was installed in a (presumably...
On 8 September 1597, the famed Renaissance polymath John Dee wrote to his friend, Sir Edward Dyer, to complain about the ‘tymes of very great dearth here … I can...
