Sunday 18 July 2010

De Masticatione Mortuorum for sale!


You can now get hold of a very special copy of a very special and rare book - but it will cost you $21.375!

Zubal Books is selling a copy of Philipp Rohr's 1679 De Masticatione Mortuorum, and you should check it out on their web site to see the images of the book. You can also find it on Abebooks:

'first edition; leaves slightly shorter than 20 cm., [24] unnumbered pages beginning with title, A1; later paper covered boards darkened and rubbed at leather spine and tips, general age toning but entirely readable and not at all fragile, C3 has five block letters penciled in margins, overall a very good copy for this very infrequently seen item; Montague Summers' copy with his book plate by Eric Gill, "Alphoinvs Montagve Svmmers Liber svvs ." with a wood engraving featuring Saint Jerome and lion; usually translated as ?On the Chewing Dead? Rohr's work explores the strange and terrible legends of the dead reanimated through demonic possession devouring their own shrouds and moving on to gnaw on nearby corpses in a sort of unholy manduction, this of course has a relevance to the vampire mythos that certainly would have been appreciated by Summers; rare '

3 comments:

kristina said...

how many pages are there - you mentioned they are unnumbered, but i would like to know how long his work is.

Niels K. Petersen said...

It says 24 unnumbered pages. Like so many of those works it's pretty brief. You can find an English translation in Montague Summers's The Vampire in Europe, if you would like to get an idea of how long it is.

kristina said...

thanks. i missed that before, but your comment about the newer translation is very helpful. i'll be sure to include it in my article.

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