FIRST EDITION, [4], IX, [1], 402p., engraved uncoloured frontispiece after J. Skene, extra illustrated with 12 plates by Cruikshank, each supplied in three state (hand coloured, uncoloured, uncoloured on mounted india paper), 20th century red morocco gilt, decorated with ornaments of devils, watches’ hats, a cat and a crescent moon, bound by Wood, t.e.g., marbled endpapers, bookplate of W.A. Foyle to paste down, 12mo, London, John Murray, 1830.
First Edition of Walter Scott’s popular work on witchcraft and the supernatural. A lifelong student of folklore, Scott had long harboured the idea of writing about witchcraft. He was able to draw on a wide-ranging collection of primary and secondary sources, including the large occult library at his stately home at Abbotsford. Empirical archivist, Robert Pitcairn, had been greatly influenced and inspired by the work of Sir Walter Scott and sent copies of the more dramatic cases to the author almost as soon as he found them. Pitcairn’s private generosity with his research notes, and the public interest they generated through their serialised publication in popular literary magazines, ensured that there would be a ready market for a book on witchcraft by Scotland’s foremost historical novelist.
The resulting book, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, was written very quickly during the summer months of 1830 and published together with a series of illustrative plates by Cruikshank in time for Christmas. The work was a bestseller and exercised a significant influence in promoting the Victorian vogue for Gothic and ghostly fiction.
The book takes the form of ten letters addressed to J. G.Lockhart, the epistolary mode permitting Scott to be both conversational in tone and discursive in method. In these, Scott presents a wide survey of attitudes to demonology and witchcraft from the Old Testament period to his own day. Scott’s account is amply illustrated with anecdotes and traditional tales and may be read as an anthology of uncanny stories as much as a philosophical treatise. He also considers the topics of ghosts, fairies, brownies, elves, second sight and mythologies of the various Germanic peoples. Belief in these phenomena is presented as the result of ignorance and prejudice, which eventually dispersed by the rise of rational philosophy in the 18th century.
Examining Scottish criminal trials for witchcraft, Scott notes that the nature of evidence admissible gave free reign to accusers and left the accused no chance of escape. Prisoners were driven to confess through despair and the desire to avoid future persecution. One trial which Scott had been quick to realise the importance of is that of Isobel Gowdie. Her confessions, rediscovered by Pitcairn in the archives of the Edinburgh High Court, became a sensational new source of Scottish witchcraft, bringing the term ‘coven’ – to denote a group of witches- into popular usage and attesting to a wealth of fairy lore in the highlands of Scotland, that was far removed from the traditional demonologists. Scott also observed that trials for witchcraft were increasingly connected with political crimes, just as in Catholic countries accusations of witchcraft and heresy went together. Throughout he treats his subjects in an analytical, rationalist manner, although pockets of superstition remain.
Lockhart was Scott’s friend, and later his son-in-law, and biographer. He was married to Scott’s eldest daughter Sophia, and they settled on Scott’s estate until he became editor of The Quarterly Review in London. His biography of Scott was his greatest book.
Provenance: W.A. Foyle
William Foyle (1883-1963), was one of the greatest booksellers of the 20th century, co-founder with his brother Gilbert, of the eponymous and iconic London bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Having purchased the former mediaeval monastery of Beeleigh Abbey in 1943, William built an impressive and unrivalled personal library of manuscripts and books on English history and literature, European and world history and discovery, which he housed in the beautiful former monastic dormitory. After William’s death in 1963 the abbey and library passed to his daughter Christina, who ran the Foyle’s empire in a notoriously idiosyncratic manner until her own death in 1999.
[Cohen 731; Embracing the Darkness A Cultural History of Witchcraft, Callow, 2018]
