The Sorcerer's Apprentice

'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' was the debut novel by the controversial German author Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943) and the first of the so called 'Frank Braun' trilogy which included 'Alraune' (1911) and 'Vampire' (1921). The novel concerns the creation and implosion of a religious cult. Readers familiar with Ewers' other works will not be surprised to learn that obsession, ritual and blood play significant parts in the narrative.

The Side Real volume is largely a reprint of the 1927 John Day edition (complete with the Mahlon Blaine artwork), which was closely overseen "line by line" by Ewers himself. However that publication had a number of passages removed, partly over issues relating to its sexual content. These have been restored to the Side Real edition, courtesy of Joe E. Bandel, thus making this edition the most complete version in English.

This edition also contains a number extra items, the most significant being previously unpublished typescript of a U.S. stage adaptation of the book prepared in the 1920's by Howard Phillips and located in the Ewers archive. It is impossible to ascertain Ewers' influence on the adaptation but the stage adaptation has a different ending to his original novel.

Ewers based the book on a number of sources, one being a real life cult created in the early Nineteenth century in Switzerland. Sabine Baring-Gould's essay 'A Swiss Passion Play' (reprinted from his book 'Freaks of Fanaticism', 1891) is the fullest account in the English language.

Ewers also drew upon his interests in mysticism and psychology in the writing of the novel and in an illustrated essay 'Mystics and Mesmerism in The Sorcerer's Apprentice', John Hirschhorn-Smith contextualises the book with particular emphasis on its ecstatic, mystic and occult sources.

CONTENTS:

Foreword by John Hirschhorn-Smith.

The fully restored version of 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' complete with the illustrations by Mahlon Blaine.

'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' a 1920's U.S. stage adaptation of the novel.

'A Swiss Passion Play' by Sabine Baring-Gould.

'Mystics and Mesmerism in 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' by John Hirschhorn-Smith.

350 numbered copies.
551pp.
Printed in red and black.
Uniform in size with the previous Side Real Ewers volumes.