LETTERS ON DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT
Book Details + Condition: Rare Victorian edition of Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft in beautiful decorated binding. 320 pages. By Sir Walter Scott, with an Introduction by Henry Morley. Published by George Routledge and Sons (London), 1884. In ill health following a stroke, Sir Walter Scott wrote Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft at the behest of his son-in-law. Letters revealed that all social classes still held beliefs in ghosts, witches, warlocks, fairies, elves, diabolism, the occult, and werewolves. Sourcing from prior 16th- and 17th-century treatises on demonology along with contemporary accounts from England, Europe, and North America, Scott's discourses on the psychological, religious, physical, and preternatural explanations for these beliefs are essential reading for acolytes of the dark and macabre; the letters dealing with witch hunts, trials (Letters Eight and Nine), and torture are compelling. Letters is both a personal and intellectual examination of conflicting belief systems, when popular science began to challenge superstition in earnest. In very good condition: tight binding; bumped and rubbed corners; light shelfwear to boards, with some age darkened spots; small stamp of London bookseller on publisher's front page; small chip to front publisher-decorated endpaper; text is clean and unmarked.
