Item #552 The Strange World of Willie Seabrook. Lit, Marjorie Worthington.

The Strange World of Willie Seabrook

New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., (1966). First edition. Full cloth. Octavo. 250 pages. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Bound in black cloth over boards with gilt-stamped spine, lavender endpapers. A few shallow bumps to spine ends. Neat prior owner name label at top of front pastedown, concealed by jacket flap. / Price-clipped jacket has a touch of fading to spine, a few shallow edge wrinkles, a few closed edge tears discreetly taped from the back side by a prior owner.

Uncommon biography of the charming and tormented ex-pat writer, William Seabrook. His 1929 book on Haitian voodoo, "The Magic Island," introduced zombies into popular culture. Seabrook once paid an accomplice to steal a chunk of human flesh from a Paris morgue so that he could cook and eat it. He felt this was the only way he could legitimately write certain passages in a book he was writing about his experiences with a tribe of cannibals.

One of Seabrooks other books was based on his experiments with witchcraft after the English occultist Aleister Crowley spent a week with Seabrook on Seabrook's farm.

Marjorie Muir Worthington was married to Seabrook in 1935, but due to his alcoholism and sadistic practices they divorced six year later. Seabrook committed suicide in 1945.


Item #552

Sold

See all items in Fiction & Literature
See all items by ,