Occult & Esoterica
[SYMONDS, John] The Great Beast. The Life of Aleister Crowley (1952)
[SYMONDS, John] The Great Beast. The Life of Aleister Crowley (1952)
New York: Roy Publishers, 1952. First US Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. 316pp. Blue cloth with gilt spine titles. With a b&w frontis photo of Crowley, plus additional photographs in b&w. Book has some small corner bumps. Dust jacket flaps were once taped to front pastedown and rear free endpaper, leaving old cellophane tape ghost marks, with tape residue also appearing on edges of jacket flaps. The dust jacket has some rubbing, a couple of short closed tears and some corner wear but still very attractive. A very good copy in like dust jacket.
This was the first of Symonds' biographies of Aleister Crowley (there were three others published over the years: The Magic of Aleister Crowley (1958); The King of the Shadow Realm. Aleister Crowley: His Life and Magic (1989); and The Beast 666: The Life of Aleister Crowley (1997).