Bringing Author Montague Summers Into Focus: Witchcraft, Gothic Literature, and the Stage

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Above, a detail from Summers' 1931 letter to John Barker, an American reader, referring to the authors of the witch hunting manuals he had translated and published. 

From a series of profiles on neighborhood notables in Summers’ local newspaper, this column by the young poet Wrenne Jarman sums up the general public sense of Montague Summers near the end of his career.

Five years after publication of The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, Summers' first book on the subject, this letter to a fan gives a convenient summation of his thesis and its growing alarmism– even expressing his regret for not having stated it clearly enough in that first book. Barker kept this letter in his copy of the first edition of Summers’ translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, along with Summers’ 1948 obituary from the Associated Press, and a clipped picture of Summers, both shown here.

This letter from the elder statesman and Conservative Party leader, an acquaintance from the fabled parties of Lady Cunard, gives some idea of the reach of Summers' influence. 

Clearly an interested reader, Rabbi Francis Cohen had well digested The History of Witchcraft and Demonology in far Sydney only months after its publication. In his letter he politely questions Summers’ support of the demonologists that he quotes, particularly their antisemitism. 

Summers’ first book on the subject set the example for what was to come: an exhaustive recounting of historical and literary cases, fully sourced in fine print in lengthy chapter notes– all tied together by the author’s alarmist theory of the reality of witchcraft and his antiquated and evocative language. Above, a lengthy review from the recently established theological journal Blackfriars, showing Summers thesis in a sympathetic, if softened, light.

Published soon after The History of Witchcraft & Demonology, Summers’ second study continued pouring out his years of research, this time by country or region. Frequently referencing the most notorious and rare of the demonologists' and witch prosecutors' books, he would soon turn to providing these in English translation.

Written after reading The Geography of Witchcraft, Ms. Hosking questions Summers' assertions regarding the historical practice of witchcraft and devil worship in Brighton, of all places. She continues by citing accounts of witchcraft in popular literature, like Harrison Ainsworth's The Lancashire Witches, admitting her difficulty in believing "that such a thing as devil worship could exist today among presumably sane and rational human beings..."

Prompted by the Countess’ sympathetic reading of The Geography of Witchcraft, her letter gives an amusing account of her sister’s visit to a fortune teller’s shop in Wales, containing a number of tropes of the “diabolic witch cult”, including a mad old woman, a sinister old man, and a trip to a basement shrine with a horned altar. 

The first volume of John Rodker’s “The Church and Witchcraft” series, and the first English translation of the infamous Hammer of Witches. Summers included the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus of Pope Innocent VIII, which was published in 1484 at the request of Heinrich Kramer to alert Europe to the threatening presence of a diabolic witch-cult and empower his inquisitorial activity in Germany. This was the only English translation of the Malleus available for 80 years, and continues to be reprinted.

Discours des Sorciers would follow on the success of the Malleus Maleficarum with the title in English as An Examen of Witches. The projected titles for “The Church and Witchcraft” series are listed on the back of the prospectus, including two that were not ultimately published, by Peter Binsfield  and Jean Wier (Johann Weyer).

The Examen of Witches appeared in 1929 with this dust jacket (on loan for this exhibit), now rare, featuring the phantasmagoric depiction of The Last Judgement by Hieronymous "Jerome" Bosch. 

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Following the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum and The Examen of Witches, Summers continued the project with the publication of two more works by the demonologists Nicholas Remy and Francisco Maria Guazzo. Remy claimed in his Demonolatry to have executed some 900 people for charges of witchcraft, and Guazzo, a reputed exorcist who, under the influence of Remy's work, later published his Compendium Maleficarum with its sensational woodcut illustrations of witches consorting with demons and assaulting otherwise pious communities.

Not published as part of the Church and Witchcraft series, Reginald Scot’s book would serve as a stand-in for the abandoned volume by Jean Wier (Johann Weyer). Both Wier and Scot were skeptical of witchcraft accusations and questioned the justice of the witch trials. 

A letter which must have thrilled Summers, the Librairie du Palais-Royal was a Paris bookshop and home of the publishers Groves & Micheaux, who specialized in unabridged editions of censored literary erotica and other controversial or risque works, mostly for the American expatriate population of postwar Paris.  Groves & Micheaux published the first unexpurgated English translations of the work of Joris-Karl Huysmans, author of La-Bas, the 1891 novel that addressed the subject of Satanism in contemporary France. Huysmans gave the most detailed description of the Black Mass published until then, although it is more literary invention than historical truth. 

This remarkable letter points to one of Summers' publishers not represented in current bibliographies of Summers' work. The short-lived "international magazine" The Globe is remembered today mostly for its publication of articles by Ezra Pound expounding his controversial economic theories. Here we see the editor, James Dunn, coaxing Summers to provide what amounts to accusations of witchcraft, based on his being "the authority on witchcraft today." Above the letter, we see an article by Summers for the March edition of The Globe for the same year, providing a brief history of necromancy and black magic among the educated elite of Europe, including a performance of the Black Mass in contemporary Brighton.

This fan from Dublin praises Summers’ History of Witchcraft and Demonology and gushes over The Werewolf, asking if there are any more like it. Clearly having fallen under Montague’s spell, he was, presumably, satisfied with the response. 

According to Summers, in Who's Who for both 1935 and 1936 editions, he had published a history titled The Black Mass, adjusting the date accordingly. The book was never published, and no completed manuscript has been brought to light, leaving just a few draft outlines and opening pages of the work. Seen alongside three of these draft pages is an item collected by Summers, probably with the intent of illustrating this work- the cover of The True and the False Black Masses, a late 19th to early 20th century example of popular decadent literature in France. The cover advertises contents that include spell-casting masses, reverse masses, diabolical masses, and bloody sacrifices.

The last of Summers’ original works on witchcraft to be published in his lifetime, Witchcraft & Black Magic was printed according to authorized economy standards put in place in the aftermath of World War II; this put the volume within reach of a wider audience who had found the price of earlier works to be an obstacle.

Another enthusiastic reader, this time from Jerusalem, Mr. Mounse has mistaken Summers’s text for an advertisement. In this instance, we see Summers’s drafted reply in the margins.

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A detail from Silhouette, by Wrenne Jarman, in the Richmond-Twickenham Times, 1945.

Summers’ copy of a rare off-print of his pioneering lecture given on January 24, 1917, before the Royal Society of Literature. Later that year, for the Centenary of Jane Austen, he would deliver his own "Essay upon Jane Austen" before the same body. These two lectures appear at the beginning of Summers's 1928 collection Essays in Petto. 

Early draft pages from Summers' long project of writing the history of the Gothic novel.

By the time of this letter’s writing, both Sadleir and Summers were deeply engaged in the search for surviving examples of the “Northanger Novels”, the existence of which would be revealed to readers the following year with Summers’s publishing of The Horrid Mysteries by Carl Grosse.

The expanded text of a paper read before the English Association on 11 February 1927, with handwritten annotations by Summers; both men were engaged in efforts to locate copies of all seven novels, which were so rare they had come to be regarded as inventions of Austen. Sadleir published this monograph drawn from his earlier speech the same month as Summers's edition of The Horrid Mysteries. Offering facsimiles of the original title pages of the Northanger novels as an appendix, Sadleir credits Summers with the discovery of their existence.

Summers planned to publish all seven of the "Jane Austen Horrids," but only the first two titles were issued. Draft introductions like this one of Francis Lathom's Gothic novel from 1798 were also underway with Clermont by Regina Maria Roche and The Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons. All seven novels would not be republished together until 1968, edited by Gothic scholar Devendra Varma.

One from a small series of letters from Summers to his friend Ellis, the "Last Victorian", regarding his thoughts for The Supernatural Omnibus to be published by Victor Gollancz. Ellis made Summers his literary executor on his death in 1933, and his papers within the Montague Summers collection show a shared interest in ghost stories, ghost lore, and personal accounts of the supernatural.

This monograph by Heine, who is credited with the rediscovery of de Sade as an author of literary importance, locates de  Sade firmly within the Gothic movement. Summers had earlier published a paper, The Marquis de Sade, A Study in Algolagnia, in 1920. Presented before the British Society for Sex Psychology the previous year, this has been described as the first published study of de Sade written in English.

Seen here are the pages of the preface, or introduction, with corrections, in Summers' handwriting. Including two original stories from the 1936 anthology The Grimoire, Summers's entry in Who's Who of 1938 claimed that Six Ghost Stories had been published in 1937. Two letters in the Montague Summers Papers reveal him shopping the manuscript to publishers in 1939. The manuscripts were eventually published as Six Ghost Stories in 2019. 

Could this article by Summers reveal something of his own attitude regarding the authenticity of his priestly calling and ordination? 

C.R. Cammell, a friend and biographer of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, had arranged a dinner at his flat with Summers and Crowley the previous year. In his Aleister Crowley: The Man - The Mage - The Poet (1951), Cammell recounted the meeting, describing Summers as "one of those rare personalities to whom the epithet extraordinary may be applied without exaggeration", and reporting that even Crowley was somewhat in awe at Summers's company.

Summers intended to publish a full volume on the Gothic novelist Matthew Gregory Lewis, developed from material already gathered for chapters in his history of the Gothic novel. Two chapters of Meet the Monk were completed, but the project did not progress further. Seen with the opening text of the first chapter are two photographs from Lewis's manuscript of The Monk, a Gothic masterpiece.

This letter, the length of which prompted Black to add a humorous apology at the very start, is one of several to Summers from the buyer of Michael Sadleir’s collection of Gothic novels. Writing from New Jersey, Black tells Summers “[w]hat particularly infuriates me is the fact that the collection I have worked so hard to make as good as possible should now be practically useless to the one man, that is yourself, who might find it of real value in an important scholarly achievement.”

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Correspondence between Summers and the Gothic enthusiast Frank Algar began in the early 1940’s, after publication of Summers’s Gothic Bibliography. Algar mentions an amazing 50,000 slips he has produced in recording what he learned about the Gothic novel; his letters routinely contain pages of typed corrections or additions to Summers’s bibliography.

Surviving among Summers' papers is his personal copy of the first edition of the Dictionary of World Literature, edited by Joseph Shipley in 1943 and reprinted in numerous editions ever since. The work contains two entries to which Summers contributed, his characteristic verbose style standing out in this concise reference work. The first is an entry for "GOTHIC", which cites a 1941 title by Summers that was planned but never published, The Gothic Spirit. The second entry, for "GOTHIC NOVEL", seems to have been written entirely by Summers, defining the term with a lengthy narrative told in archaic, evocative prose.

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This excerpt from the 1945 "Silhouette" article sums up Summers' pioneering achievements in the field of Restoration theatre. 

Introducing Montague Summers to a wider public as the “brilliant” editor of the 6-volume Works of Aphra Behn, published the same year, The Bookman reveals a Montague Summers who is more modern than he would seem just 10 years later. 

Performed at the Aldwych Theatre, April 15 & 16. Includes an 8-page history by Summers of the play’s performances that would become a valued feature of the Phoenix Society’s programmes until Summers left the group in its 1924 season.

Summers' note on the first page of his history of the play records its next performance at the Embassy Theatre in October, 1936.

Seen here with the programme are photographs of the theatre’s proscenium stage, set up for different scenes, including a view of the King’s Theatre at Covent Garden from across Drury Lane. 

In this letter from a fellow scholar of British theatre history, Lawrence offers friendly advice on the design of Summers’ edition of Downes’ Roscius Anglicanus. Among his comments on the book and other points of Restoration drama, Lawrence mentions their similar temperaments and aptly warns Summers of the dangers of both perfectionism and rushed work, exemplifying his point with a correction at the words “make mistakes”.  

One of several letters from Prof. Spencer found in the Montague Summers Papers, this one refers to Spencer’s work on Shakespearean stagecraft which attacked the views of W.J. Lawrence, among others. Spencer’s letters show a cordial deference to Summers.

Montague Summers had a reputation for engaging in contentious debate in the literary journals that he routinely contributed to, like Notes & Queries and Modern Language Notes. While there is little remaining in his papers that reflects this side of him, this letter from his old friend in theatre history shows the effect such controversy can have for a true enthusiast, in this case offended by the assertions of Hazleton Spencer, professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Seen here is a page from Summers’s list of illustrations, alongside a leaf from an 18th century edition of Dryden’s plays showing music by Henry Purcell used in Dryden’s opera The Indian Queen, and a photograph of actress Agnes Lauchlin in costume as Lady Fidget in the 1934 Phoenix production of William Wycherly’s The Country Wife.

This incomplete letter from Noyes shows the effects of Summers’ work among American academics. On the front, Noyes sends off for Summers, hopefully, a copy of his new book, Ben Jonson on the English Stage, 1660-1776  [1935], while expressing his fear of Summers finding mistakes. On the back, he writes about his excitement at directing at Harvard an expurgated version of Dryden’s Marriage a-la-Mode with an all-male cast, on a 9-foot by 12-foot platform, according to Restoration stage technique.

In his letter, Wise thanks Summers for his gift of the newly published Restoration Theatre, which, he says, could have only been dared by Montague Summers. Later that year, Wise would be uncovered as one of the major forgers of the 20th century.

Both the finished, autographed manuscript, as well as two typescripts of this unpublished play are found in Summers’ papers. It dramatizes scenes from the life of William Henry Ireland, the infamous forger of pseudo-Shakespearean plays.

An early unpublished play by Summers. Alternative titles seen on the cover page suggest that this is not a reworking of a play by the same title, two of which by different authors are known from the time.

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Establishing Summers' ordination in the Church of England, similar documents confirming the validity of his ordination as a Catholic priest have not been found. After fleeing to the continent from his position at the Parish of Bitton in 1908, under a cloud of rumor and scandal, Summers converted to Catholicism and studied again for the priesthood. Although his planned ordination was prevented at the time, it is possible that Summers received a valid ordination, however illicit, either in England or on the Continent. Seen to the right, a detail from Summers' obituary in the Associated Press, 1948.

Examples of relics collected by Summers during his continental travels that possibly adorned his private oratory, along with common prayer cards and images of saints.

This curious document, with its abbreviation of Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, "For the Greater Glory of God", has been separated from its relic, which it describes in Latin as a fragment of the body of St. Elmo, although its own “authenticity” isn’t damaged as a result of its loss, as Summers has obviously fabricated it, even using a signet to “seal” the authentication in imitation of actual documents.

This calligraphed quire was made for Summers by a widowed Catholic convert, along with the calligraphed prayer and poem written for Summers. Ermangarde would later be denied holy communion by the Archbishop of Southwark for celebrating mass in her private oratory with Summers, on the supposition that he was not, in fact, a Catholic priest.

Two curses carefully copied out in Summers' handwriting. The first, The Curse on Cromwell, is noted as a traditional "ancient Irish" curse, understandable enough in the context of Irish history. The second, titled Bruadar, Smith, and Glinn: A Curse, was copied from Religious Songs of Connacht (1906), by the Irish scholar Douglas Hyde, who would become the first president of Ireland. Displayed here are three of the six pages of verses with a separate note by Hyde describing the process of cursing by reciting the verses while attending the stations of the cross in reverse.

In his letter Ellis thanks Summers for sending his latest book, The Vampire, His Kith and Kin, which was published a few weeks earlier. He notes Summers’ industriousness, writing “Your activity is wonderful. It seems no time since I received your last book. You will deserve a holiday by the sea.” His letter ends with reference to a recent trial, likely the obscenity trial of the novel The Well of Loneliness which took place that November, and expresses regret that more progress was not made “since the days when my book was pursued”.

The reprinted text of an address by Havelock Ellis, inscribed by the author to S.M. Ellis and containing a letter from him as well. This copy of the address came to Summers later, and contains his manuscript note regarding historical same-sex unions in the context of religious devotional practices, seen here.

This book collected a number of Summers’s early writing, including The Great Mistress of Romance: Ann Radcliffe and The Marquis De Sade, A Study in Algolagnia, and other essays on Gothic literature, Restoration drama, and Catholic mysticism.

This poster of unknown provenance expressing Jacobite allegiance may have been collected by Summers to illustrate an article. It may have been printed for a private club during the Neo-Jacobite Revival between 1880 and the First World War.

A favorite novel of Summers, this second edition followed an earlier bowdlerized edition of 1943 that replaced the first Fortune Press edition of 1930, most of which was confiscated and destroyed by the police for violation of obscenity laws. 

Charlie Dunbar Broad wrote this for the Trinity College magazine the year he became lecturer in moral science at Cambridge University- the same year The History of Witchcraft and Demonology was published. His work was in the philosophy of science and epistemology, but Broad was also interested in psychical research because of its implications for our understanding of science generally.  This satirical piece by Broad proposes a curriculum for a Hogwart's-like college at Cambridge; with the manuscript is seen its appearance in Trinity Magazine.

This tattered scrapbook with its label written in Summers’ handwriting was inherited from his friend Stewart Marsh Ellis, the "last of the Victorians". It contains numerous clippings of ghost stories in the form of personal accounts, folktales, and short fiction, as well as extensive personal accounts collected by Ellis, as seen here.

In this remarkable letter, the founder of the National Laboratory for Psychical Research responds to a letter from Summers which apparently detailed a ghostly experience in his home. Shown with the letter is a newspaper clipping about an investigation by Price and the NLPR into "poltergeist" activity surrounding an 8 year old boy. 

This is one of four letters written to Summers in 1935 by best-selling author Dennis Wheatley, this one referring to an invitation for a weekend visit of Wheatley and his wife to Summers’ home, which would be cut short for mysterious reasons. Wheatley addressed this story many years later in his memoirs, and it has become a fabled event for his fans. Wheatley first met Summers while researching the occult in writing his best-selling 1934 novel The Devil Rides Out, seen here in a 1962 mass-market edition. Five years after the death of Summers, he would serve as a model for Wheatley's corrupt and Satanic Canon Copely Syle in the 1953 thriller To The Devil A Daughter.

In the last years of his life, beginning in 1943, Summers regularly, and prolifically, submitted hackwork essays to the popular newsprint magazine Everybody's Weekly, under the editorship of Greville Poke. During these years, Summers withdrew more and more from social life, keeping company only with his closest friends and colleagues of similar interests. Seen here is an issue looking expectantly to the future, just two weeks before the end of WWII in Europe.

 Sometimes composed of re-worked chapters from his earlier books, the topics for Summers' Everybody's work ranged widely. Seen here are pages from Male Impersonators, an article about early actresses on the English stage who were famous for playing male roles, Is Hitler Dead?, and Knockers and Rappers: Poltergeists. 

Two articles by Summers under preparation for Everybody's. With his interest in rare books and obscure topics, Summers provided photographs from his own collection, as well as reproductions he obtained from libraries and private collections, for his published books and articles. 

This letter and its enclosed photograph were sent by a founding associate and trustee of Georgetown University Library, whose papers are also found at Georgetown. A bibliophile to some, bibliomane to others, Mayfield routinely went to surprising lengths to acquire autographs from the authors he collected – as of yet, no reply from Summers has been found in the John S. Mayfield Papers.

An appreciative fan, Jones answers a letter from Summers with the assurance that he has for years “looked upon your books on the supernatural as models for the rest of us to follow” and sends him a signed reprint of his recent article on New York folklore. 

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Letter from the pioneering French anthropologist and folklorist, enclosing his published review of Montague Summers’s histories of witchcraft in their French translation. The strange illustration on his letterhead is a late 17th century engraving of a pilgrimage banner depicting images of the cult of St. Blaise, honored in Ogy for the healing of eye diseases.

The Montague Summers Papers contain a small number of draft pages from his memoirs. Containing some material rejected from the final manuscript, they are all the more valuable. Seen here are the opening pages of the chapter “The Last London Salon”, describing his experience participating in British high society of the early 20th century.

Summers planned his memoirs to span two volumes, the first covering his literary career and the second his ecclesiastical career. Only the first volume was completed, titled The Galanty Show, meaning a “shadow-play” and ultimately published in 1980. 

The news of Summers’s death on August 10th clearly impacted Mr. Bason, who has filled his letter up with green pathos. Promised a role as his exclusive bibliographer, Summers also promised to provide Bason unpublished manuscripts to accompany the bibliography. Fred is clearly distraught over the death of his friend, as well as his venture, although ill health prevented them from ever meeting.

Seen here alongside Summers’ 1940 will and a catalog for the posthumous auction of his celebrated library of rare books, one can sense the forces arrayed to disperse Summers’ collection. His will states that he is a Catholic priest in holy orders, but can this statement be trusted?

This fine edition of Brocard Sewell’s “memoir” of Summers is bound in green moire silk and printed on hand-made pink paper. It is open to the foreword by the actress Sybil Thorndyke, who performed in a number of Phoenix productions, and seen with an autographed photo of her which belonged to Summers.