What lies behind humanity's oldest fear – the man who sheds his skin and runs as a wolf? A learned and unsettling survey of the belief that spanned the ancient world and the Christian centuries alike.
Taken from Montague Summers' The Werewolf (1933), this volume examines lycanthropy at large: its nature, its literature, and the evidence Summers marshalled from classical authors, chronicles, and trial records. Also included is Caroline Taylor Stewart's essay The Origin of the Werewolf Superstition. Augustus Montague Summers (1880 – 1948) was an English author and clergyman celebrated for his earnest studies of witches, werewolves, and vampires, all of which he held to be quite real; in 1928 he produced the first English translation of the notorious witch-hunters' manual, the Malleus Maleficarum.
This edition features:
- A wide survey of shape-shifting belief, from the wolf-men of antiquity to the confessions of the early modern courts.
- The distinction between the true werewolf, the demoniac, and the deluded, as debated by theologians and physicians.
- Caroline Taylor Stewart's scholarly essay tracing the psychological and Pagan roots of the werewolf superstition.