Montague Summers, The Werewolf

Record summary

Montague Summers’s book surveys European werewolf beliefs, demonological writings, trial narratives and literary representations. It is a useful lead for comparing how shape-changing was framed across medieval, early modern and modern sources, including the relationship between lycanthropy, witchcraft and diabolic possession. Summers wrote from an explicitly Catholic and occultist perspective, however, and his compilation often repeats older authorities without evaluating their reliability. The work is therefore evidence for twentieth-century reception and transmission, not independent confirmation of the events or transformations it discusses.