Frank Hamel

Frank Hamel was an English-language nonfiction writer whose books appeared in the early 1900s. Records for his work show a strong interest in French subjects, including Famous French Salons (1908), Fair Women at Fontainebleau (1909), The Dauphines of France (1910), and An Eighteenth Century Marquise, a study of Émilie Du Châtelet.

He also wrote Human Animals (1915), a study of folklore and occult belief centered on stories of people transforming into animals. In its preface, Hamel describes gathering examples from records and traditions to explore the subject from the viewpoints of folklore and occultism, which gives a good sense of his method: wide reading, curiosity, and a taste for unusual historical material.

Biographical details about Hamel himself are hard to confirm from the sources found here, so the clearest picture comes through his books. Taken together, they suggest a writer drawn both to elegant European history and to the stranger beliefs that survive in myth and legend.