BARING-GOULD, Sabine.
The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition.
London: Smith, Elder, and Co. , 1865.
$2,800.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-151122
+$500
First Edition of Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves
First edition of this pioneering, scholarly study of lycanthropy. Duodecimo, bound in three-quarters leather over marble covered boards with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, double gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers, tissue-guarded frontispiece. In very good condition.
The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition (1865) by Sabine Baring-Gould is an early scholarly investigation of lycanthropy that traces werewolf legends across classical antiquity and medieval Europe. Drawing on Greek, Roman, Norse, and French sources, Baring-Gould examines over a millennium of folklore while interpreting the werewolf not as a literal supernatural phenomenon but as a manifestation of psychological disturbance and social pathology. The study incorporates historical cases of alleged cannibalism, violence, and grave desecration—including discussion of figures such as Gilles de Retz—situating these episodes within broader cultural anxieties about crime, madness, and moral transgression. Often regarded as one of the first sustained English-language academic treatments of the subject, the work bridges folklore studies, early criminology, and Victorian attempts to rationalize superstition through emerging psychological frameworks.
The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition.
$2,800.00
In Stock
