The Werewolf

Description

First published in 1933, Montague Summers’ The Werewolf stands as one of the most complete and enduring studies of lycanthropy in the English language. Unlike modern treatments that reduce werewolves to metaphor or monster-movie cliché, Summers approached his subject with deadly seriousness—believing, quite literally, in the Devil, in witches, and in the reality of shape-shifting evil.

What makes this book extraordinary is not merely its flamboyant style but the sheer range and depth of its sources. Summers draws on medieval chronicles, ecclesiastical texts, inquisitorial records, and folk legends to reconstruct the history of the werewolf across centuries, cultures and nations. He weaves a tapestry of horror, as scholarly as it is unsettling, from the infamous trials of 16th-century France and Germany to the theological debates on the nature of the beast within.

Despite his eccentricity, Summers was no amateur. His bibliography is vast, his Latin unerring, and his commitment to documenting the truth—however supernatural—unshakeable. For readers of horror and folklore, The Werewolf is a chilling gothic curiosity. For serious students of European superstition, religious history, or the darker side of anthropology, it remains essential: a cornerstone text that no serious scholar of the supernatural can afford to ignore.

This edition is amply illustrated with images from different periods and contains an expansive new foreword written by anthropologist Nikolas Arhem.