Demonology and Devil-lore is Moncure Daniel Conway’s sweeping comparative study of demons, devils, and evil spirits across the world’s mythologies and religions. Conway traces the figure of the demon from ancient Near Eastern and Indian sources through classical, Christian, and folk traditions, arguing that ideas of evil reveal much about the cultures that produced them.
A wide-ranging work of comparative religion and folklore, the book assembles a vast catalogue of beliefs about serpents, dragons, witches, and infernal beings. Conway’s rationalist, anthropological approach typifies Victorian scholarship that sought natural and psychological origins for supernatural belief. It remains a rich quarry of myth and legend and a notable monument of nineteenth-century comparative mythology and ethnology.