Richard Eden (c. 1520–1576) was an English alchemist and translator. His translations of the geographical works of other writers helped to foster enthusiasm for overseas exploration in Tudor England.[1]
From the late 1540s Eden worked for Richard Whalley, who would be Sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1595. He was salaried at £20 per annum as he sought the secret of turning base metal into gold.[1]
Eden set out to translate Vannoccio Biringuccio's De la pirotechnia into English and had completed the first 22 chapters in 1552, but he made the mistake of lending out the manuscript and was unable to retrieve it. However, he included a translation of its first three chapters in his Decades of the new worlde of 1555, although he omitted Biringuccio's attack on alchemists.[3]
Overseas exploration
The new protector, the Earl of Northumberland, wishing to challenge Spain's global empire and open up the Far East to European trade, spurred publications that helped to encourage this. Under his direction, Eden in 1552 became secretary to Sir William Cecil and in 1553 published A Treatyse of the Newe India, translating part of Sebastian Muenster's Cosmographia.[1]
^Introduction to The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio, translated from Italian with an introduction and notes by Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi, New York: The American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 1942, pp. xxi-xxii.
