From the 1910s through the 1930s, Maximilian J. Rudwin produced some excellent pioneering scholarship on the European traditions of the fantastic in literature, especially as related to various manifestations of the devil. Rudwin was an unusually peripatetic scholar, and virtually nothing has been written about him or his oeuvre. His trail has not been easy to follow, nor has it been simple to trace his origins.Rudwin published widely in English, and sometimes in French and German. His first book was only thirty-seven pages, Die Prophetenspruche und -Zitate im religiosen Drama des deutschen Mittelalters [The Prophet and Disputation Scenes in the Religious Drama of German Middle Ages] (1913). His 1913 Ph.D. thesis from Ohio State University was published as Die teufelszenen im geistlichen drama des deutschen mittelalters [The Devil Scenes in the Religious Drama of the German Middle Ages] (1914), and expanded as Der Teufel in den deutschen geistlichen Spielen des Mittelalters und der Reformationszeit [The Devil in German Religious Plays of the Middle Ages and the Reformation] (1915). Other books include The Origin of the German Carnival Comedy (1920), A History and Bibliography of the German Religious Drama (1924); Bibliographie de Victor Hugo (1926), Romantisme et Satanisme [Romanticism and Satanism] (1927) and Les ecrivains diaboliques de France [The Diabolical Writers of France] (1937)
A number of the stories are familiar to the ordinary reader, although the greater part is out of his reach in any other edition. It is, however, the conception of such a compilation that makes it unique. For the first time has the vague and varied diabolical literature been presented...
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