Books

First edition of one of the most important works on witchcraft in the English language, often found defective or internally made-up. This is a superior copy, being complete, clean, and unsophisticated. It also has appealing annotations and manicules by an early owner which demonstrate a close and knowledgeable reading of the text. Scot's work is radically sceptical: he denies that there were any witches in contemporary England and asserts that all those executed for witchcraft were innocent. He offers instead a socio-economic explanation for the origin of witch accusations in England, suggesting the claims were due to older women begging for alms and cursing their neighbours when they were turned away empty-handed. Any subsequent ailments that befell the uncharitable neighbour, he suggests, could then be used as evidence of witchcraft. This explanation, now a touchstone in academic discourse, is an early example of that given by Robin Briggs in his influential Witches and Neighbours (1996). Scot furthermore describes those who confessed to being witches as either deluded or the victims of torture, and he dismisses as false much of the evidence for the existence of witchcraft given by earlier authorities. Another of the arguments Scot uses to refute the claim that there was biblical sanction for the execution of witches is a close analysis of textual translations. He demonstrates that none of the terms often translated as "witch" held that meaning in the First edition of one of the most important works on witchcraft in the English language, often found defective or internally made-up. This is a superior copy, being complete, clean, and unsophisticated. It also has appealing annotations and manicules by an early owner which demonstrate a close and knowledgeable reading of the text. Scot's work is radically sceptical: he denies that there were any witches in contemporary England and asserts that all those executed for witchcraft were innocent. He offers instead a socio-economic explanation for the origin of witch accusations in England, suggesting the claims were due to older women begging for alms and cursing their neighbours when they were turned away empty-handed. Any subsequent ailments that befell the uncharitable neighbour, he suggests, could then be used as evidence of witchcraft. This explanation, now a touchstone in academic discourse, is an early example of that given by Robin Briggs in his influential Witches and Neighbours (1996). Scot furthermore describes those who confessed to being witches as either deluded or the victims of torture, and he dismisses as false much of the evidence for the existence of witchcraft given by earlier authorities. Another of the arguments Scot uses to refute the claim that there was biblical sanction for the execution of witches is a close analysis of textual translations. He demonstrates that none of the terms often translated as "witch" held that meaning in the original languages, making this a significant text in the history of scholarly biblical criticism. In the work, Scot also details the supposed procedures for conjuring demons so that he may debunk them. He lists known demons, their aliases, and their characteristics (a marginal note added next to the list remarks "these divels with aliases, are all bastards"). The 13th book in this work is the first significant practical manual of the tricks of conjurors, again listed to demonstrate the duplicity of the so-called magicians, and the chapter was later republished as The Art of Juggling (1612) and reworked as Hocus Pocus Junior in 1634. The text was frequently used as the basis of manuals on legerdemain published into the 20th century. The work was unsurprisingly controversial and extensively attacked, most notably by James VI of Scotland in his Daemonologie (1597). There is a rumour, first traced in 1659, that he ordered all known copies of Scot's work to be burned on his accession to the English throne in 1603. While there is no contemporary evidence for this, and every extant copy adds to its lack of veracity, the story exemplifies the friction that followed the work's publication. The Discoverie of Witchcraft has since become the indispensable reference point for all writers on witchcraft, in part due to its comprehensiveness as a source of information on contemporary supernatural beliefs and practices, regardless of whether the reader agreed with Scot's arguments. Its influence can also be seen in literature; it is widely believed that Shakespeare read Scot and used this work as a source for the witches of Macbeth, the mock trial of King Lear, for Bottom's transformation, and the hobgoblin-esque character of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Reginald Scot (1538-1599) was a Kentish engineer, surveyor, and Member of Parliament. Besides his investigations into the occult, he played a major role in the rebuilding of Dover Harbour in 1583, the most important engineering feat of the Elizabethan period, and wrote the first practical treatise on hop culture in English. Early Annotations: This copy has annotations to around 55 pages in two distinct inks. The first hand, using a paler ink, is evident on 28 pages and largely consists of ink trails and letter formations unrelated to the content. It is now clearly legible on only a couple of leaves, with several examples apparently sometime erased. The second hand, writing in both English and Latin using a darker ink, remains both legible and extensive. This hand is seemingly Elizabethan and uses common scribal abbreviations contemporary to the work's publication such as superscript tildes. Although there is no corresponding ownership inscription, we can surmise from the annotations that the owner was university-educated, well-read in contemporary demonology, and familiar with London (identifying St Martins church on page 352 as being "in London"). When writing in Latin, the annotator occasionally uses a script which is more continental in its formation than his English commentary, mimicking a style common for Latin manuscripts. This can be most notably identified in his annotation on page 45 in the word "magisterculus" ("a small mind with oversized pretensions"). His use of Latin is an appealing affectation; it is often blended into an English sentence ("or you a lyar atq(ue) hoc p(ro)batu(m) est" ["or you are a liar and this has been proven"]), or embellishing his argument in English with conventional Latin phrases (such as the affirmation "recte hic inter nos" - literally "we agree it as such among us") as a demonstration of knowledge. These annotations include repeated comparisons to, and indeed claims of plagiarism from, Johannes Weyer's De praestigiis daemonum (1563) a Dutch work printed in Latin (published within decades in French and German, but not English until 1991). Weyer's work is often held alongside Scot's as a comparable early rational analysis of witchcraft, and the owner clearly felt Scot's work was derivative: "all this part almost verbatim out of Wier's 5 book" (p. 45), "Wier sayeth this point and all that above" (p. 52), "Wier alledgeth it likewise" (p. 160), "Wier cap 18 tab 5 with the rest & more" (p. 246). Weyer, like Scot, questioned the basis of witchcraft accusations and especially the confessions extracted from those accused. He "approached the subject of witchcraft from four different viewpoints: theological, philosophical, medical, and legal... he believed the basic cause of witchcraft to be disturbance of imagination and described most of those accused of witchcraft as poor, gullible old women who had fallen into this reckless credulity" (Grolier Medicine 20). Four charming examples of manicules are featured in the annotations, the first of which points to a passage on page 80 concerning love spells, with the lines relating to using your lover's shoe as a toilet and being made to eat dung underlined: "the party bewitched must make a jakes [toilet] of the lover's shoe. And to enforce a man, how proper so ever he be, to love an old hag, she giveth unto him to eat (among other meats) her own dung". Alongside these the annotator has copied a leaf from the intricate ivy design of the decorated initial on page 180. The final "Discourse on devils and spirits" suggests that Scot saw the idea of such supernatural beings as purely a metaphor for an individual's internal leanings towards good or evil, and that Scot was neither a Trinitarian nor believed that the account of the fall in Genesis referred to a historical event. The annotator's thoughts on the complications between religious reality and metaphor are evident in his annotations: Scot's proposal on page 104 that miracles described in the Bible were "done in a vision, and not in veritie of action" is described by the annotator as "Absurd", whereas by the claim that miracles experienced contemporaneously were not real the annotator has put an affirmation. The annotations also engage with Scot's writing on the doctrine of transubstantiation. For example, on page 234 next to a section headed "A papistical charme" and "A charm said in the canon of the mass", the annotator comments, "In others he belies the papists: this is most true… he brings not the life out of our communion where the minister sayeth 'The body & preserve thy soule & body'". Provenance: This copy is from the library of George Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland (1758-1833), once the wealthiest man in Britain; it has his gilt armorial stamp on the front pastedown and pencil note to front free endpaper: "mentioned in Hallam History of Literature". It was sold in the Sotheby's sale of his seat, Trentham Hall, 23 November 1906, lot 1,501. READ MORE Small quarto (192 x 138 mm). Early 19th-century smooth calf blind-tooled in period style, gilt lettering on spine. Housed in a brown quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Woodcut headpiece to title, large historiated initials to dedication and the first book, numerous other decorated initials and ornaments, 4 full-page woodcut illustrations, 7 tables, black-letter text throughout with rubrics and shoulder-notes in roman ty Extremities very slightly rubbed and scuffed, slight flaking to front joint, marginal tidemarks, small rust-hole in Dd1, generally clean, fresh, and firm, a very good copy of a book usually found in compromised condition, here handsomely bound. Bartlett 230; Graesse p. 58; Norman 1915; STC 21864.

Reginald Scot's 'The Discoverie of Witchcraft,' first published in 1584, is one of the earliest works in English to openly denounce witchcraft and magic as folklore and superstition. Through comprehensive chapters, Scot debunks the myths surrounding witchcraft practices and critiques the witch hunts and trials of his time.