The Life of Paracelsus: Theophrastus von Hohenheim, 1493“1541

Abstract

APATHETIC interest attaches to this work. It is the last literary production of a gifted woman who had endeared herself to a large circle of friends by the sterling integrity of her character, By her remarkable intellectual power, her breadth of culture, and by her many-sided activities, especially in the educational world. The work itself represents the thought and labour of years, but the author died before it was given to the world, dying indeed a few hours after passing the last sheets for press. Twenty years ago Miss Anna Stoddart determined to devote her literary ability and her considerable linguistic attainments to what she came to regard as a sacred and imperative duty, namely, to rescue from contemptuous oblivion the memory of one whom the great majority of his fellows held to be an extravagant and pretentious charlatan—a bibulous braggart, uneducated, quarrelsome, self-assertive, and disreputable—and, while thus restoring his fair fame, place him in his true relation to the great moral and intellectual movement of the European Renascence.

The Life of Paracelsus: Theophrastus von Hohenheim, 1493“1541.

By Anna M. Stoddart. Pp. xv + 309. (London: John Murray, 1911.) Price 10s. 6d. net.