The lore of the unicorn / Odell, Shepard

Chapter I. The Gorgeous East -- Chapter II. The Holy Hunt -- Chapter III. Shaping Fantasies -- Chapter IV. East And West -- Chapter V. The Treasure of His Brow -- Chapter VI. The Battle of Books -- Chapter VII. Rumours -- Chapter VIII. Conjectures -- Chapter IX. Certainties -- Chapter X. Reflections -- Notes on the text.

Odell Shepard', declared one reviewer when this book was first published, 'is a scholarly hunter of the wildest and most elusive game'. His quarry and his delight, has been the Unicorn, and he has pursued the trail of this strange beast through mythology, folk-lore, magic, medicine, literature, art, exploration, poisoning and the history of commerce Urbane and lucid in its presentation, the book is also a storehouse of arcane and curious lore. But the 'holy hunt' is not treated as an end in itself: the Unicorn becomes for Mr Shepard a single, vivid example of 'the ways by which magic rose into religious dogma and this gradually succumbed, or is succumbing, under the attrition of modern science'.