Mad Lucas: The Strange Story of Victorian England’s Most Haunted Hermit

First edition, first impression. [4], 88pp including several pages of monochrome illustrations.  Fawn cloth-covered boards, gilt titles to spine.  8vo.  Cloth a little bruised and rounded at corners and spine tips.  Some pencil annotations on the front free endpaper else internally neat. clean, bright and tight.  In its original laminated, illustrated dust wrapper, moderately bumped on extreme edges and a little shelf worn, not price clipped.  

The true story of the extraordinary life of James Lucas – Mad Lucas – a hermit who developed a paranoid fear of his family and walled himself up in his mansion for 25 years, and yet enjoyed meeting other people and arguing his case.  A wild, religious figure, he literally lived a life of sackcloth and ashes, but always with his gun beside him.  Dickens reviled him, and his obituary in The Times was headlined ‘a doubtful loss’ but little has been published about him since and it has taken Richard Whitmore, a well-regarded TV presenter – to research and record the full story of Mad Lucas.  A quite hard to find title now.