Alan Leo's Dictionary of Astrology

Book excerpt: In 1917 at the height of his fame, Alan Leo was charged with fortune-telling, which was illegal, and taken to court. He had been tried on similar charges in 1914, which had been dismissed. But the charges brought in 1917 stuck. Leo was given a hefty fine. As winning on appeal seemed unlikely, Leo paid the fine and went to Cornwall for a rest, where on 30 August, 1917, he unexpectedly died of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged 57. His friends blamed it on the strain of the court proceedings. At the time of his death, this Dictionary was one of Leo's unfinished projects. Installments of the Dictionary had appeared in Leo's monthly magazine, Modern Astrology, up to the end of the article "Horoscope" (pgs. 130-136). That the project was long-standing is hinted by the article on Hindu Astrology (pgs. 76-101), written by Sepharial some years before and which Leo had presumably purloined. More material was in preparation, but Leo's untimely death brought matters to a halt. By the early 1920's, Vivian Robson had succeeded Leo as editor of Modern Astrology, a post he shared with Bessie Leo, the widow. An intense, scholarly type, Robson stumbled across bound copies of Leo's incomplete book while he was compiling his own astrological dictionary. At the suggestion of Bessie, Robson abandoned his dictionary and set about to complete Leo's, using the many notes and fragments that Leo had left. Which was published in 1929 as Alan Leo's final book. Shortly thereafter Bessie and Vivian had a falling out, whereupon Vivian left. This book was to be an orphan. Like its precursor, James Wilson's Dictionary of Astrology of 1819, Leo's book contains several full-blown monographs. Both books have lengthy entries on Horary Astrology, for example. These articles tend to break the flow of the book. For this reason the current publishers, Astro-America, have added headings to each page, that the reader may know whereabouts in the book he may be. The publishers have also added a list of principal articles to the front, as well as a complete list of entries (forming an index) in the back. Alan Leo's Dictionary of Astrology is again in print. Profit from the wealth of knowledge it contains!