William Gilbert (1763–1824), theosophist, poet, and astrologer, is best known as the author of The Hurricane
(1796). Gilbert published this poem in Bristol,
where he briefly associated with the poets Coleridge, Wordsworth and
Southey, who all viewed him and his writing with a mixture of admiration,
affection and alarm. His writings on magic and astrology are of interest to anyone
wanting to trace the survival of the hermetic tradition into the Romantic era, and
are essential background to the symbolism underlying The Hurricane. The site includes:
biography: the best place to start if you are new to Gilbert: includes a biography with many previously unpublished discoveries.
works: Online-texts of The Hurricane and fully annotated e-texts of all Gilbert's magical and astrological articles published in The Conjuror's Magazine 1791-3.
William Gilbert and Esoteric Romanticism:
a Contextual Study and Annotated Edition of The Hurricane.
(Liverpool University Press) Available from the publisher