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| BARING-GOULD, Sabine. The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition. London: Smith, Elder, 1865. First edition. |
"In many a distant village there exists the Legend of the Were-Wolf or Wolf Man...a legend of a strange mortal man with the hair and fangs of an unearthly beast...his hideous howl and dirge of death" (The Wolf Man, 1941).
In one of those distant villages, the sleepy little hamlet of Beverly Hills, CA, the legend has become reality. It is now the home of rare Were-Wolves.
A copy of the scarce first edition of Sabine Baring-Gould's classic, oft-reprinted, The Book of Were-Wolves, which recently surfaced after an absence of ten years' worth of full moons, was heroically captured in a life or death struggle by Mark Hime, proprietor of Biblioctopus, the bilaterally symmetric, multi-tenacled rare book business in Beverly Hills, who is now offering it just in time for All Hallow's Eve 2010.
The Book of Were-Wolves was the first volume in English to be wholly devoted to the subject. Within, Baring-Gould collected the legends, folklore, and tales from many cultures over many centuries. It remains the primary reference on the subject simply because it has never been surpassed.
The last copy to come to auction, ten years ago, was, as Hime describes it, a fright, "a glue-repaired horror, damp-stained inside and out, a jump-into-the-wolf-pit-with-a-pork-chop-around-your-neck kind of copy," a condition statement that reads like a CSI report; all it lacks is a chalk outline.
Rare book dealers are often asked about how they acquire material. Watch Mark Hime of Biblioctopus subdue, after violent struggle, the Were-Wolf in Beverly Hills:
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| CRANACH, Lucas. Werewolf (1512). |
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| 18th century engraving. |
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| German woodcut, 1722. |
What we bookmen do to snag good books...silver bullets, silver-topped canes; whatever it takes.
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BARING-GOULD, Sabine. The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition. London: Smith, Elder, 1865. First Edition. Octavo. xii, 266 pp. Illustrated.
__________Image of The Book of Were-Wolves binding courtesy of Biblioctopus.
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A few years ago I realized that during a visit to Colchester UK I could take a bus to nearby Mersea Island, connected by a causeway to the mainland. Sabine Baring-Gould had been a preacher on the island for many years and wrote a romantic novel entitled "Mehala" set on Mersea, which I dutifully read. I liked it, but most people probably wouldn't. Another book set on the island was "Blackerchief," Marjorie Allingham's first novel written when she was just a teenager. I liked that, too, but she didn't and tried to have it surpressed. My favorite part of the trip was finding the church in which Baring-Gould preached and standing in his old pulpit. He also wrote "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the 27-volume "Lives of the British Saints," which I have no plans to read. B-G was one of many 19th-century English eccentrics, and I'm always pleased to run across his name.
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