12mo. xi, [1], 191pp, [1]. With a final page of publisher's advertisements. Contemporary cloth, with new endpapers. Rubbed, remnants of paper label to spine, some loss to head and foot. Inked ownership inscription to head of title page, a trifle spotted.

Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach's (1775-1833) account of the story of Kaspar Hauser (1812-1833), a German boy who claimed to have grown up in isolation in a cell. After being found on the streets of Nuremberg, Hauser was presumed to be half-wild, and from the woods. Instead, he would eventually claim he had lived his life in a small dungeon, finding bread and water next to his bed every morning, and taught only to say the phrase 'I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was'. Five years later, the now-famous Hauser would come home with a deep stab wound to the chest, which would eventually be fatal. His story was doubted both in life and posthumously, with its various contradictions pointed out by physicians.

Von Feuerbach, the first man to publish a critical summary of the facts of the case, was a German legal scholar. He died the same year as Hauser - his family believed his mysterious death may have been a poisoning with the intention of concealing his work on the story.