Adam, l think she was a colleague of yours?

https://www.academia.edu/11691550/The_Ma..._Colquhoun

Listed as open source (courtesy of Princeton UP I think). Grab it while you can:

https://archive.org/details/the-jewish-a...k/mode/2up

Thesis by James Campbell. Uploaded by the author.

This thesis examines the alchemical patronage of Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520–1598), Principal Secretary and later Lord Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I. Through an examination of Cecil‘s surviving papers, along with other primary manuscript and printed works, it places Cecil‘s patronage of alchemy within the context of both his previous examined patronage and the intellectual context of sixteenth century England. This thesis analyses why Cecil, a key member of government for over fifty years and Elizabeth‘s most trusted councillor, believed in the legitimacy of alchemical solutions to both national and personal problems.

https://www.scribd.com/document/60762873/Thesis

Hi Adam,

The link from ‘alchemy books’ to Amazon on your website seems to be broken.

Apparently Herbert Silberer was the first person (at least in print) to adopt a psychoanalytical approach to alchemy. His book 'Probleme der Mystik und ihrer Symbolik', Vienna, 1914 is available here in a translation by Dr. S. E. Jelliffe as 'Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism'.

Silberer provides a really excellent summary of alchemy in Part II Section II followed by his psychoanalytical commentary:

https://archive.org/details/problemsofmy...2/mode/2up

Early study by Gershom Scholem (in German):

Part 1:
https://www.academia.edu/44376240/Gersho...1925_13_30

Part 2:
https://www.academia.edu/44376256/Gersho...925_95_110


There is an English translation by Klaus Ottmann of Scholem's much later book on the subject, Alchemy and Kabbalah, available as an ebook:

https://www.scribd.com/document/41626770...rshom-epub

This engraving  appears tipped into a copy of Oswald Croll's Chymisch Kleynod of 1647, though not into all copies. It may have been taken from another work, but it is clearly of that period and of alchemical import. I have not been able to identify its original source.
The central figure is a kind of Queen of Heaven, standing on the Moon, with the twelve keys to the zodiacal signs, and a halo of the seven planets.

The text on the right seems to say

"Fire connects white and red
in the new life the power is found"

while that on the right

"What dies through the spirit
cannot remain in the state of death
it will bring forth new fruits to life"


   

What book(s) would you recommend to an intelligent person with little or no knowledge of alchemy to give them a general idea of the subject?

Aloys Wienner von Sonnenfels.
Splendor lucis, oder Glantz des Lichts. Eine kurze physico-cabalistische Auslegung des grösten Natur-Geheimnusses, insgemein Lapis Philosophorum gennant.
Vienna, 1745

Or Glory of Light, containing a brief physico-cabalistic interpretation of the greatest mystery of Nature, called the lapis philosophorum. From the basic Hebrew text of the Holy Scriptures, printed in the Hebrew and German languages and published by Aloysio Wienner.


   

From Pepper's Playbook of Metals 1861

https://archive.org/search?query=%22play...+metals%22