The book of were-wolves: being an account of a terrible superstition.

London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1865. Octavo (195 x 135 mm), rebound in handsome gilt-ruled quarter scarlet morocco over red cloth, spine in compartments with gilt decoration and black leather title labels lettered in gilt; pp. xii, 266, 2 (publisher’s ads.); wood-engraved frontispiece plate ‘The Were Wolves’; half-title with some off-setting at bottom edge and a creased bottom corner, preliminaries and approximately the first 30 pages of main text with pale water stain around the foot of the gutter (not affecting any text), p. xii with a couple of minor stains to fore-edge margin; otherwise clean and fresh throughout.

Very scarce first edition. 

‘This book is a monograph on a peculiar form of popular superstition, prevalent among all nations, and in all ages.‘ (Preface)

‘… the were-wolf may have become extinct in our age, yet he has left his stamp on classic antiquity, he has trodden deep in Northern snows, has ridden rough-shod over the mediævals, and has howled amongst Oriental sepulchres. He belonged to a bad breed, and we are quite content to be freed from him and his kindred, the vampire and the ghoul. Yet who knows! We may be a little too hasty in concluding that he is extinct. He may still prowl in Abyssinian forests, range still over Asiatic steppes, and be found howling dismally in some padded room of a Hanwell or a Bedlam.‘ (p. 6)

Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) was an English Anglican priest, hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist, eclectic scholar, and writer of hymns (his most famous composition being Onward, Christian Soldiers). He was a prolific writer, with well over 120 published works to his name. One of the earliest of these was The book of were-wolves, which has established itself as a classic of folkloristics and has remained, since the appearance of the first edition in 1865, one of the most frequently cited studies of lycanthropy. Baring-Gould traces the were-wolf from its shape-shifting ancient and mediaeval origins and across the oral and written traditions of Scandinavian, English, French, Russian, and Indian mythology. He also investigates historical cases of lycanthropy and its association with violence.

Sadleir, 159.