Sabine Baring-Gould treats the werewolf as a meeting point between mythology, folklore, crime, and attempts at psychological explanation. The Book of Were-Wolves gathers traditions from antiquity through the nineteenth century, asking how stories of human transformation changed across cultures and historical settings.
Northern and medieval material includes the Volsung Saga, Hrolf's Saga, the Courland werewolves, Pierre Bourgot, Michel Verdung, the Gandillon family, and Jean Grenier. Other chapters move through Scotland, Norway, Russia, Poland, India, Abyssinia, and Greece, comparing protective customs and regional lore without reducing the tradition to one origin.
The inquiry also follows darker side paths. Baring-Gould discusses cruelty, blood fascination, hallucination, and mental illness as possible explanations for reported lycanthropy. Extended sections on the Maréchal de Retz examine investigation, trial, and execution, placing crimes and accusations beside legendary shape-shifting.
The Book of Were-Wolves is therefore broader than a catalogue of monsters. Its chapter sequence moves from ancient belief and Scandinavian tradition to folklore, natural causes, mythology, criminal cases, and a sermon on werewolves. Modern readers can approach it as an early historical study whose classifications reflect its period, and as a record of the stories and fears through which different societies imagined the boundary between human and beast.
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