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Guazzo, Francesco Maria., Summers Montague (ed.)., Ashwin, E.A. (trans.).
Compendium Maleficarum.
Publisher: John Rodker, London;
Date of Publication: 1929
Stock Code: 14322
The first English edition, limited to 1275 copies only. Quarto, pp., xxi, [1], 206, plus facsimile woodcuts within text. Original publisher’s quarter chocolate cloth over red buckram, pictorial cartouche in gilt to upper board, titled in gilt to spine, foredge untrimmed. Title page in red and black, printed on laid paper. Bookseller’s ticket of the Peabody Book Shop, Baltimore to front paste-down (the Peabody was the first American bookshop to include a bar). Spots of soiling to boards, corners rubbed, minor shelf-wear to head and tail of spine, top edge dusty. Upper hinge weak, very slight toning to outer margin. A very good copy. A witch-hunter’s manual, gathered in three books within one volume, translated from the Italian original of 1608. Guazzo discusses witch’s pacts with the devil, demonology, succubi, potions, curses, and spells. Along with the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ (1487), this volume comprises one of the most significant treatises on witchcraft and demons published at the height of the witch craze. Edited by the eminent occultist and bibliographer Montague Summers, this first English edition is elegantly reproduced by the fine-press printer Richard Clay. £400.00