Montague Summers

Conversion to Catholicism

Gothic fiction became the other focus of Summers's literary scholarship, in addition to Restoration drama. In 1938, Summers published a history of the Gothic novel titled The Gothic Quest, which was later praised by the French scholar André Parreaux as "a unique and valuable book, indispensable to the student of the period".

Poetry

Summers also edited the poetry of Richard Barnfield, a contemporary of Shakespeare. Summers' introduction to his 1936 edition of Barnfield's poems stressed the homosexual theme of some of those works, particularly The Affectionate Shepherd. Brocard Sewell states that Summers's introduction to The Poems of Richard Barnfield is one of the two works that Summers published on the "psychology of sex", the other being his 1920 essay on the Marquis de Sade. Other Catholic scholars contemporary with Summers were highly critical of the Malleus. For instance, the Rev. Herbert Thurston's article on "Witchcraft" for the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1912, refers to the publication of the Malleus as a "disastrous episode."

After his first works on witchcraft were published, Summers turned his attention to vampires, producing The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928) and The Vampire in Europe (1929). According to Summers's books, his research on vampires was not exclusively bibliographical, but also drew on oral traditions that he had encountered during his travels in Greece. According to historian Juliette Wood, Summers's

Summers wrote works of hagiography on Catherine of Siena, Anthony Maria Zaccaria, and other Catholic saints, but his primary religious interest was always in the occult. While Aleister Crowley, with whom he was acquainted and whose career he followed closely, Summers also appears to have been a member of the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society of homosexual men that was established by George Cecil Ives, another member of the BSSSP, and which was active between the 1890s and the 1920s.

In 1926, Summers advertised in the London Times for a secretary to assist him with his literary work. A young Cyril Connolly responded, but found Summers uncongenial and turned down the position. Connolly privately mocked Summers in blank verse as "a sorcerer / a fruity unfrocked cleric of the Nineties / Like an old toad that carries in his head / The jewel of literature, a puffy satyr / That blends his Romish ritual with the filth / Scrawled on Pompeian pavement."

The posthumously published personal diaries of socialite and later Conservative politician Sir Henry Channon relate how Channon first met Summers at a dinner party in Summers's honour given by Lady Cunard in January 1928. Channon's diaries then relate a series of visits to Summers's home in Richmond. Channon recounts that, on more than one occasion and at Channon's suggestion, Summers took Channon upstairs to his private chapel after dinner and beat him over the altar. Channon characterized Summers as a "lecherous priest", "a madman", and "as dangerous as he is brilliant", cutting off contact with him after a couple of months. A number of ghost stories and a short novel, The Bride of Christ, were found among Summers's papers and published long after his death.

Relations with the Catholic Church

Although he presented himself as an uncompromising defender of Catholic orthodoxy, the great majority of Summers's books on religious subjects were not published with the approval of Catholic authorities (see nihil obstat and imprimatur).

Father Thurston also called attention to the fact that Summers did not figure in any English register as either an Anglican or a Catholic priest, but was instead a literary figure with distinctly Decadent tastes. In 1938 both Mons. Ronald Knox and Douglas Woodruff objected to having their own essays published in a collection on Great Catholics edited by Fr. Claude Williamson, after they learned that the book would also include an essay by Summers on John Dryden. Shortly after Summers's death in 1948, the Catholic Herald published a statement by the Diocese of Southwark to the effect that Summers had, many years earlier, been a student for the priesthood but that, as far as was known, he had not been ordained. The Catholic Bishop of Southwark, Peter Amigo, excommunicated Mrs. Greville-Nugent for allowing Summers to celebrate mass in the private oratory at Kingsley Dene, her home in Dulwich.

Summers bequeathed his estate and papers to his long-time personal secretary and companion Hector Stuart-Forbes. This legacy was valued at £10,000 (the equivalent of about £300,000 in 2024), but Stuart-Forbes was already seriously ill and died in 1950, aged 45, and was buried in the same unmarked plot as Summers. An autobiography of Summers was published posthumously in 1980 as The Galanty Show, but it left much unrevealed about the author's life and dealt only with the literary side of his career. In the 2000s, many of Summers's personal papers were re-discovered in Canada, where they had been kept by members of Stuart-Forbes's family. A collection of Summers's papers is now at the Georgetown University library.

Works

Books on the occult The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, 1926 (reprinted ) The Geography of Witchcraft, 1927 (reprinted ) The Vampire, His Kith and Kin, 1928 (reprinted by Senate in 1993 as simply The Vampire) The Vampire in Europe: A Critical Edition, 1929 (reprinted ) (reprinted with alternate title: The Vampire in Lore and Legend ), edited by John Edgar Browning The Werewolf, 1933 (reprinted with alternate title: The Werewolf in Lore and Legend ) A Popular History of Witchcraft, 1937 Witchcraft and Black Magic, 1946 (reprinted , ) The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, 1947

Poetry and drama Antinous and Other Poems, 1907 William Henry (play), 1939, unpublished Piers Gaveston (play), 1940, unpublished

Fiction anthologies edited by Summers The Supernatural Omnibus, 1931 Victorian Ghost Stories, 1933 The Grimoire and Other Supernatural Stories, 1936

Other books St. Catherine of Siena, 1903 Lourdes, 1904 A Great Mistress of Romance: Ann Radcliffe, 1917 Jane Austen, 1919 St. Antonio-Maria Zaccaria, 1919 Essays in Petto, 1928 Architecture and the Gothic Novel, 1931 The Restoration Theatre, 1934 The Playhouse of Pepys, 1935 The Gothic Quest: a History of the Gothic Novel 1938 A Gothic Bibliography 1941 (copyright 1940) Six Ghost Stories (1938, not published until October 2019) The Bride of Christ and Other Fictions (posthumous, 2020)

As editor or translator Works of Mrs. Aphra Behn, 1915 Complete Works of Congreve, 1923 Complete Works of Wycherley, 1924 The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, 1924 The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, 1927 Covent Garden Drollery, 1927 Horrid Mysteries by the Marquis de Grosse 1927 (part of an incomplete edition of the Northanger Horrid Novels). The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest by 'Ludwig Flammenberg' 1927 (part of an incomplete edition of the 'Northanger Horrid Novels'). Demoniality by Ludovico Maria Sinistrari, 1927 The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, 1928 The Discovery of Witches, 1928 by Matthew Hopkins (reprinted ) Compendium Maleficarum by Francesco Maria Guazzo, translated by E.A. Ashwin, 1929 Demonolatry by Nicolas Remy, translated by E.A. Ashwin, 1930 The Supernatural Omnibus, 1931 (reprinted ) Dryden: The Dramatic Works, 1931–32 Victorian Ghost Stories, 1936 The Poems of Richard Barnfield, 1936 The Complete Works of Thomas Otway, 1936