1830 1stED Book - bound by The Hampstead Bindery - Letters on Demonology & Witchcraft color illustrated by Cruikshank.
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Author: Scott, Sir Walter. (George Cruikshank, illustrator).
Title: Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft Addressed to J.G. Lockhart, Esq.
Publisher: London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1830. First Edition.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 6 " X 4 ".
Pages: ix-402 pages.
Binding: Attractive, beautiful, and very good full red morocco leather binding finely bound by the Hampstead Bindery (hinges tight, hairline crack on the front cover upper joint - as shown, slightly scuffed and worn - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, rare foxing or staining - mainly to the frontispiece and illustrations margins - as shown). All edges gilt.
Illustrations: Beautifully illustrated with the frontispiece of the Bow in Edinburgh by Lizars after J. Skene and the wonderful scarce complete 12 engraved colored plates by George Cruikshank.
The book: Very attractive and rare first edition with the scarce complete 12 engraved colored plates by George Cruikshank of Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft in a beautiful and attractive 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 was 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.