Edward Kelley - References in Fiction

References in Fiction

• Both Dee and Kelly are referred to in the classic Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin.
• Gustav Meyrink's 1927 novel The Angel of the West Window describes John Dee's and Edward Kelley's astrological and mystical experience.
• In the 1951 movie The Emperor and the Golem, Edward Kelly is fake occultist and conspirator.
• Both Dee and Kelley appear as characters in Episode Four of the 1973 BBC/Masterpiece Theater miniseries Elizabeth R. Kelley offers Elizabeth his prophecies about the death of a prominent person (which turns out to be Queen Mary of Scotland) and harangues one of the conspirators against Elizabeth, hinting that he has foreseen the plot to assassinate her, finally observing the conspirator's execution for treason with a wry smile.
• In the 1987 novel The Solitudes and its 1994 sequel Love and Sleep by John Crowley, details Edward Kelley meeting with renaissance magician John Dee and their subsequent travels in Europe.The third of Crowley's Aegypt sequence Daemonomania sets out the parting of Dee and Kelley, outlining Kelley's death in Bohemia.
• In Patricia Wrede's 1989 novel Snow White and Rose Red, Kelly and John Dee trap a faerie spirit in a crystal, and Kelly is shown to be experimenting in alchemy.
• Kelley appears in Peter Ackroyd's 1993 novel The House of Dr Dee. In addition to the story narrated by John Dee himself, which features Kelley as an important character, the novel also features a second (entirely fictional) story narrated by Matthew Palmer, who inherits Dee's mysterious residence in the 1990s. Ackroyd's novel fictitiously places the house in the Clerkenwell section of London rather than at Mortlake - reinforcing many of the novel's themes (radicalism; sacred london; Dee as 'Cockney visionary') but inaccurately representing actual events from Kelley's association with Dee.
• Edward Kelley figures prominently in the 2000 novel School of the Night, which is part of the Elizabethan mystery series by Judith Cook, The Casebook of Dr Simon Forman—Elizabethan doctor and solver of mysteries. John Dee is also mentioned, but does not appear as a character.
• In the 2002 alternate history novel Ruled Britannia, Edward Kelley was burned in the first chapter, weeping and trying to call to William Shakespeare for help.
• In Brian Stableford's science fiction story, “The Philosopher’s Stone”, published in the July 2008 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, Kelley and Dee appear in a fictionalized version of their meeting and beginning collaboration.
• In the 2009 novel Vampire a Go-Go by Victor Gischler, Edward Kelley is the narrator and one of the main characters, with John Dee in Prague.
• The 2010 play Rudolf II, by Edward Einhorn, features Kelley's stepdaughter Elizabeth Jane Weston and details some of Rudolf's relationship with Kelley.
• In the film Angel Heart, Krusemark gives the pseudonym Edward Kelly when he removes Johnny Favorite from the hospital.
• The 2010 play Burn Your Bookes by Richard Byrne traces the rise and fall of Kelley as an alchemist through his relationships with John Dee and Elizabeth Jane Weston.
• The heavy metal band Iron Maiden recorded the song The Alchemist, from their 2010 album The Final Frontier, about John Dee and Kelley.
• The characters in the Robin Wasserman novel The Book of Blood and Shadow search for a miraculous machine purportedly created by Kelley, and built by his stepdaughter.