1926 First Edtn First Impression THE HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT AND DEMONOLOGY By Rev Montague Summers

1926 First Edition First Impression

THE HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT AND DEMONOLOGY
By Rev Montague Summers

KEY DETAILS
Condition: Very Good
Format: Hardcover, Octavo (Standard) (8vo 6 × 9 in 152 × 229 mm )
Note: Binding/size selection follows standard bibliographic conventions and is approximate; exact measurements may vary.
Published By: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd., London, 1926
Language: English
Collation: xv, 353, [16] pp.; 8 plates including frontispiece. Complete.
SKU: BTETM0002641
Shipping Info: Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 30, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 2Kg
Tracked Shipping, Insurance Coverage as per Customer Request

DESCRIPTION
The History of Witchcraft and Demonology
Series: The History of Civilization, edited by C. K. Ogden Illustrations: Frontispiece and 7 further plates First edition, first impression of Montague Summers’ first major work devoted to witchcraft and demonology, published in 1926 as part of C. K. Ogden’s influential History of Civilization series. An important and characteristically individual twentieth-century study of European witchcraft, demonology, possession and the supernatural, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology established Summers as one of the best-known English writers on occult history between the wars. It is notable not only for the breadth of its historical and literary source material, but for Summers’ extraordinary standpoint: unlike most modern historians of the subject, he approached traditional accounts of witchcraft and demonic activity as phenomena that could be substantially real. The volume is bound in the publisher’s original dark blue cloth, with gilt lettering to the spine and the gilt Owl of Athena emblem of C. K. Ogden’s History of Civilization series to the upper board. This copy retains all eight called-for plates and the complete 16-page publisher’s catalogue at the rear. The illustrations draw upon important historical representations of witchcraft and demonology and include David Teniers’ The Departure for the Sabbat as frontispiece, together with images derived from The World Tost at Tennis, Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum, Quevedo, Jacques de Gheyn after Jan Ziarnko, William Faithorne, Pieter Bruegel, and The Witch of Edmonton. The first edition is considerably more collectible than the numerous later reprints through which Summers’ work became widely known, particularly when, as here, the full complement of plates and publisher’s advertisements survives.

CONDITION, COLLATION & COPY NOTES
A complete and internally attractive copy in the publisher’s original dark blue cloth. Binding with gilt owl device to the upper board and gilt lettering to the spine. The gilt remains notably bright and attractive. Cloth with general rubbing and handling marks, most noticeably some fading, mottling and spotting to the spine. Wear and fraying at the spine ends, with minor loss or thinning of cloth at the head and wear around the lower spine and joint area. Corners and extremities rubbed. Boards with scattered surface marking and rubbing, including a noticeable horizontal abrasion or scratch across the lower portion of the rear board. Upper page edges somewhat dust-darkened. Internally the book is generally clean and well preserved. Paper remains largely clean and bright, with occasional light spotting, age-toning and minor handling marks. Plates are well preserved. No significant annotation or intrusive marking noted. Original dust jacket is not present. Complete with all eight called-for plates, comprising the frontispiece and seven further plates, and with the complete 16-page publisher’s advertisements at the rear. Please see Photos as part of condition report.

REFERENCES
D’Arch Smith, Timothy. Montague Summers: A Bibliography. Revised and corrected edition, Aquarian Press, 1983: A11a. First published bibliography: Timothy D’Arch Smith, A Bibliography of the Works of Montague Summers, Nicholas Vane, 1964. The History of Civilization, edited by C. K. Ogden. Contemporary review: Nature, vol. 119, 1927. Digitised copies of the 1926 edition are held by major institutional and digital collections including the Internet Archive / Project Gutenberg. Contemporary Kegan Paul series advertisements describe the History of Civilization volumes as uniformly bound in art-cambric cloth with specially designed gilt lettering and the Owl of Athena emblem; The History of Witchcraft and Demonology was advertised at 12s. 6d. net with eight full-page plates.

SYNOPSIS
The History of Witchcraft and Demonology is Summers’ wide-ranging examination of the beliefs, accusations, literature and theological traditions surrounding European witchcraft. Following an extensive introduction, the work is arranged into seven substantial chapters: The Witch: Heretic and Anarchist; The Worship of the Witch; Demons and Familiars; The Sabbat; The Witch in Holy Writ; Diabolic Possession and Modern Spiritism; and The Witch in Dramatic Literature. Drawing extensively upon demonological treatises, witch-trial narratives, theological writing, folklore, scripture and literary sources, Summers moves from the supposed organisation and practices of witches to familiars, pacts with the Devil, the witches’ Sabbat, biblical accounts of sorcery and possession, spiritualism, and finally the representation of witches on the English stage. The book is particularly valuable as a document of the historiography of witchcraft. Summers possessed considerable familiarity with early demonological literature and obscure printed sources, but he did not approach them with the detachment expected of a modern academic historian. He openly rejected purely sceptical explanations of witchcraft and treated supernatural agency, diabolic possession and other traditional demonological concepts as serious possibilities. This position placed him at odds both with rationalist interpretations of the witch trials and with Margaret Murray’s then influential theory that historic European witchcraft represented the survival of an organised pre-Christian fertility religion. Summers instead regarded witchcraft principally through the theological framework established by earlier Catholic demonologists. For the modern reader, the resulting work is therefore compelling on two levels: as an extensive repository of historical witchcraft material and as an unusually vivid expression of early twentieth-century occult and demonological scholarship. Its extensive bibliography, running from pages 315–346, further demonstrates the remarkable range of Summers’ reading and makes the volume a useful guide to the earlier literature of witchcraft, demonology and possession. One of Summers’ defining works and an important twentieth-century contribution to the literature of witchcraft, notable equally for its scholarship, its uncompromising authorial perspective, and its influence upon later popular understanding of European demonology.

AUTHOR BIO
Augustus Montague Summers (1880–1948) was an English author, literary scholar, anthologist and one of the most distinctive twentieth-century writers on witchcraft, demonology, vampires and the supernatural. Educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and Lichfield Theological College, Summers was ordained an Anglican deacon in 1908. He converted to Roman Catholicism shortly afterwards and subsequently styled himself the Reverend Montague Summers. The precise circumstances and canonical status of any later Catholic priestly ordination remain disputed, although his clerical appearance and manner became an inseparable part of his public persona. Alongside his supernatural interests, Summers was a serious scholar of Restoration drama and Gothic literature. His work on seventeenth-century theatre preceded his emergence as an occult historian and gave him an unusually broad knowledge of early printed literary and historical sources. The publication of The History of Witchcraft and Demonology in 1926 transformed his reputation. It was followed by The Geography of Witchcraft in 1927, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin in 1928, The Vampire in Europe in 1929, and The Werewolf in 1933. In 1928 Summers also produced the first complete English translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger’s notorious late-fifteenth-century manual of witchcraft and witch prosecution. His translation, introduction and notes played an important role in bringing the text to a modern English-speaking readership. Summers remains a fascinating and controversial figure precisely because he combined genuine bibliographical learning with beliefs that separated him sharply from most contemporary historians. His books continue to be collected both as works of occult history and as distinctive artefacts of the twentieth-century revival of interest in witchcraft, demonology, Gothic literature and the supernatural.