1868 Scarce Edition - Demonology & Witchcraft - WITCHES & FAIRIES with 6 illustrations by Cruikshank.
(description)
Author: Scott, Sir Walter. (George Cruikshank, illustrator).
Title: DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT. Illustrated with six Full-Page Steel Engravings by George Cruikshank.
Publisher: London, William Tegg, 1868.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 6 " X 4 " .
Pages: ix-396 pages.
Binding: Attractive and very good half leather binding (hinges fine, slightly scuffed and worn, chip on the upper part of the spine - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, rare foxing and staining - as shown, name of a previous owner -Egerton Castle (1858 - 1920) who was a Victorian-era author, antiquarian, and swordsman- on the title page - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the 6 full-page steel engravings by George Cruikshank + the illustration of the Bow in Edinburgh (uncommon in this edition).
The book: Scarce illustrated edition of Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft in a beautiful binding. -- In ill health following a stroke, Sir Walter Scott wrote Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft at the behest of his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, who worked for a publishing firm. Letters were written when educated society believed itself in enlightened times due to advances in modern science. Letters, however, revealed that all social classes still held beliefs in ghosts, witches, warlocks, fairies, elves, diabolism, the occult, and even werewolves. Sourcing from prior sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treatises on demonology along with contemporary accounts from England, Europe, and North America (Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi, for one), 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 morbidly compelling. Scott was neither fully pro-rational modernity nor totally anti-superstitious past, as his skepticism of one of the "new" sciences (skullology, as he calls it) is made clear in a private letter to a friend. Thus, Letters is both a personal and intellectual examination of conflicting belief systems, when popular science began to challenge superstition in earnest.
The author: Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet FRSE (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor.
The illustrator: George Cruikshank (27 September 1792 – 1 February 1878) was a British caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his life. His book illustrations for his friend Charles Dickens, and many other authors, reached an international audience.