Rare Were-Wolves Found in Beverly Hills

by Stephen J. Gertz

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.

CRANACH, Lucas. Werewolf (1512).

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.

18th century engraving.

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.

German woodcut, 1722.

 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:

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.

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Image of The Book of Were-Wolves binding courtesy of Biblioctopus.
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