Demoniality.
London: The Fortune Press, 1927. First edition thus. Hardcover. Large Octavo. xliv + 128pp. Original black cloth with gilt titling to spine, top edge gilt. Edition limited to 1290 numbered copies, the first 90 of which were on Arnold unbleached handmade paper, and bound in full vellum. The remaining copies, numbered 91 - 1290, were printed on Batchelor handmade paper, and bound in black buckram. This is one of the buckram bound versions (No. 215). As the title suggests, "De Dæmonialitate, et Incubis et Succubis" deals in part with Incubi and Succubi, and their congress with human beings. It was written by the famous Franciscan theologian Lodovico Maria Sinistrari (1622 -1701) during the last years of his life, but it was not published until 1875, when the French bibliophile Isodore Liseux, who had discovered the original manuscript in a bookseller's shop in London in 1872, issued from his press the Latin text with a French translation in 1875. Four years later he issued an English translation of the work. The print run was quite small and the book rare from the outset, so Montague Summers brought out this new translation, with an excellent Introduction, under R. A. Caton's Fortune Press imprint in 1927. The book evidently caught the eyes of British censors, and in 1934 the work was prosecuted under the Obsecene Publications Act and copies were condemned and ordered to be destroyed. The number of copies thus destroyed is unknown, but the book is certainly scarcer than its stated limitation would suggest. A hint of shelf-wear to the cloth, a little darkening to the pastedowns and edges, but still a lovely, tight, crisp clean copy - as close to Fine as it would be possible to find - in a VG+ example of the rare dust jacket (dust jacket a little darkened in places, and with a hint of shelf-wear to the edges, but like the book it is hard to believe that a better example could be found. Now protected by removeable mylar sleeve). Item #62808
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