The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason
book · 2003
LINK
SUMMARY
The standard modern scholarly biography of Cagliostro. Cited for the synthesis that Cagliostro sold his 'Egyptian' healing, regeneration regimen, and arcana to wealthy aristocratic clients across Mitau, St Petersburg, Strasbourg, Lyon, and Paris in the late 1770s and 1780s. ISBNs copied on 2026-06-03 from the OpenLibrary search record for title 'The Last Alchemist', author 'McCalman' (2003 HarperCollins hardcover 9780060006907; 2004 Harper Perennial paperback 9780060006914); publisher and year confirmed against the same record and the archive.org catalogue entry.
NOTES
Iain McCalman’s The Last Alchemist (2003) is the bundle’s modern scholarly anchor for Cagliostro’s career as an itinerant seller of cures, regeneration, and Egyptian-Rite initiation to the European aristocracy. It is used for the geography of his practice and the structure of his clientele, with all biographical dates and the imposture finding cross-checked against the 1791 Inquisition biography and the period and reference literature.