Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft

Author:   Walter Scott ,  Walter Scott, Sir
Publisher:   Fantastic Books
ISBN:  

9781604597141


Pages:   232
Publication Date:   04 February 2009
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft


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"In ill health following a stroke, Sir Walter Scott wrote Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft at the behest of his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, who worked for a publishing firm. The book proved popular and Scott was paid six hundred pounds, which he desperately needed. (Despite his success as a novelist, Scott was almost ruined when the Ballantyne publishing firm, where he was a partner, went bankrupt in 1826.) Letters was written when educated society believed itself in enlightened times due to advances in modern science. Letters, however, revealed that all social classes still held beliefs in ghosts, witches, warlocks, fairies, elves, diabolism, the occult, and even werewolves. Sourcing from prior sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treatises on demonology along with contemporary accounts from England, Europe, and North America (Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi, for one), Scott's discourses on the psychological, religious, physical, and preternatural explanations for these beliefs are essential reading for acolytes of the dark and macabre; the letters dealing with witch hunts, trials (Letters Eight and Nine), and torture are morbidly compelling. Scott was neither fully pro-rational modernity nor totally anti-superstitious past, as his skepticism of one of the ""new"" sciences (skullology, as he calls it) is made clear in a private letter to a friend. Thus, Letters is both a personal and intellectual examination of conflicting belief systems, when popular science began to challenge superstition in earnest."

Full Product Details

Author:   Walter Scott ,  Walter Scott, Sir
Publisher:   Fantastic Books
Imprint:   Fantastic Books
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.345kg
ISBN:  

9781604597141


ISBN 10:   1604597143
Pages:   232
Publication Date:   04 February 2009
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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