THE NECROMANCERS: The Best of Black Magic and Witchcraft

A bedside sampler of horrors culled from several centuries and parts far and near, even into Oxbridge and the B.B.C. The British compiler stands happily aghast, as will his readers, at monstrosities which never come too close for comfortable deploring -- first person accounts by Benvenuto Cellini, Yeats, and the long-suffering wife of a Crowley acolyte; texts of authentic indictments, confessions, and a pact with the Devil; and more scholarly perspectives from Margaret Murray, Robert Graves, Ronald Seth, and others. Leavened not with bats' blood, but short fiction from standard works by Hawthorne and Algernon Blackwood to rare pieces by Harrison Ainsworth and the 18th century German Lawrence Flammenberg. Whig lords cavort to their hellfire clubs, Elfdale peasants mount their brooms, and courtiers file into the Chambre Ardente; but the devil, possibly because he's dealing with the British, honors his part in the pact and brings no very evil smell.