Summers, Montague (1880-1948)

Summers, Montague

DEMONOLOGIST , AUTHOR, EDITOR (ENGLAND)

BORN 10 Apr 1880, Clifton, Bristol - DIED 10 Aug 1948, Richmond, Surrey: Dynevor Road
BIRTH NAME Summers, Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague
CAUSE OF DEATH heart attack
GRAVE LOCATION Richmond, Greater London: Richmond Cemetery, Grove Road (Section 11, grave 10818)

Montague Summers was the youngest of the seven children of a baker. He family was Anglican, but later he converted to Catholicis. He studied at Trinity College, Oxford and at Litchfield Theological College. In 1909 he became a Roman Catholic priest, and he was known as Reverend Summers, but as far as known he never held a position in the church.

Summers studied witchcraft, demonology, and vampirism on which he published extensively. He was an opponent of all this, but he was acquainted with Aleister Crowley when they both lived in Richmond. He was known as an eccentric and he dressed like an eighteenth-century cleric. Between 1911 and 1926 he held positions as a teacher of English, Latin, French, and history. Despite his eccentric habits it appears he was a well-respected teacher. He was once accused of having intercourse with a boy, but he was acquitted.

In the 1920s he discovered together with Michael Sadleir (1888-1957) on which seven obscure Gothic Novels from the 1790 Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" was a parody. Until then it was thought by many that Austen had invented the titles herself. Summers reviewed old books written by demonologists and translated works in English, among them "Malleus Maleficarum" (1486) by Heinrich Keamer and James Sprenger. He was also interested in the theatre of the seventeenth century, and he edited many plays from that period. In 1926 he published "The History of Witchcraft and Demonology" and in 1928 the first English translation of "Malleus Maleficarum" ("The Hammer of the Witches"), a 15th century manual in Latin on the detection and prosecution of witches.

From 1929 to 1934 he lived in Oxford. During the 1930s he edited collections of ghost stories in "The Supernatural Omnibus" and these collections were reprinted during the 1970s. Summers died in 1948 and he was buried at Richmond Cemetery. His autobiography "The Galanty Show" was published in 1980, but much of his life remained a mystery since most of his papers were lost. On 26 Nov 1988, a stone was erected on his grave that had been unmarked until then. It has the inscription "Tell me strange things", usually Summers' first words when people visited him. His friend, secretary and heir Hector Stuart-Forbes was buried beside him in 1950. In 2000 some of Summers' papers were rediscovered in Canada in the possession of Stuart-Forbes' family members.

Work: "The Vampire: His Kith and Kin" (1928); "The Vampire in Europe" (1929); "The Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel" (1938); "Witchcraft and Black Magic" (1946); "The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism" (1947).

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