A life traced through books
Little personal information about Locke has been established. Library catalogues expand his name to John Courtenay Locke, and the Wellcome Collection gives his birth year as 1880. His death date, family background and education remain unclear.
The two publications provide a firmer outline of his activity. The First Englishmen in India appeared in 1930, and his English translation of Grillot de Givry’s study was published in 1931. They show him working with historical material in different forms: editing earlier English documents and translating a French account of the imagery and literature of occultism.
Translating Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy
Grillot de Givry’s Le Musée des sorciers, mages et alchimistes appeared in Paris in 1929. Locke’s English translation names ten colour plates and 366 illustrations in the text. The held title page is dated 1931 and bears the Houghton Mifflin imprint for Boston and New York. George G. Harrap issued a British edition in the same year.
The three parts concern sorcerers, magicians and alchemists. Pictures carry much of the discussion. The opening chapters follow demons and the Last Judgment through Christian sculpture and other art; later passages interpret serpents, dragons and figures from biblical stories as symbols of alchemical operations.
Grillot de Givry signs the preface describing his search for pictures in libraries and private collections. Those accounts of research and the book’s interpretations are his. Locke supplied their English rendering, including captions and explanations of the symbolic images.
