The Old Book of Magic; a Precise History of Magic, Its Procedure, Rites and Mysteries as Contained in Ancient Manuscripts, Embellished With Engravings of Wonderful Charms and Talismans.
Chicago: De Laurence, Scott & Co., Copyright Date 1918. First Edition (?). Hardcover. Octavo. 458pp (plates not paginated). Original royal blue decorated cloth with gilt title and design to cover and spine. B&W frontispiece and plates and numerous illustrations in text. An extraordinary collection of magical and astrological lore, apparently assembled largely by "cutting and pasting" from earlier volumes. It would be an interesting exercise to try to ascertain just what de Laurence's sources were, but they appear to include Eliphas Levi (the cover design is obviously copied from the 1913 Rider edition of Levi's "The History of Magic"), Ebenezer Sibley; Raphael; etc. etc. - he has even snuck in the classic horror story "The Storm" by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson (1781–1851) but retitled "The Midnight Storm" and without any attribution (the inference being that de Laurence himself had written it). The publisher, Lauron William de Laurence (1868 - 1936), was a renowned book pirate, plagiarist, and publisher of occult literature. de Laurence was notorious for taking other people's works and reissuing them under his own name (sometimes retitling them in the process). For all his faults and eccentricities de Laurence played an important part in the occult history of the USA: he was a pioneer in selling occult books and supplies by mail order, and the books that he published were received with great fervor by many in the American occult community. The volume has the year 1918 on the copyright page, and while de Laurence publications are notoriously difficult to date, all indications are that this is probably its year of publication and that this was the first edition thus. The volume has obviously been exposed to damp at some stage, and the cloth of the front cover is somewhat bubbled and discolored, the rear considerably less so. Corner's bruised. The front endpapers have a pale brown "tide-mark" and there is some light wrinkling to the first few leaves. Paper of front endpaper hinge cracked but holding firm, a dozen or two leaves towards the center of the book a little creased at the top corner. A sturdy, G+ copy of a genuinely scarce edition (Issued without dust jacket). Item #62080
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