Melissa Westwind presents the twenty earliest stories of Dartmoor's Monster Dogs edited in a collection for the first time. They range from a hundred to almost a thousand years old and were found in dusty tomes, Victorian anthologies and medieval Latin, English and Welsh manuscripts. Taken together they tell the story of the history of the first Beast of Dartmoor which prowled the high moor long before today's Big Cat entered the scene in the 1980s. These monsters breathe fire, accost housewives, hunt children and wreak terrible havoc across Britain.

Through careful analysis and comparison the author traces the evolution of the legend from the shadow left by The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901 back to the earliest Dartmoor hound in 1830, and then back still further to the earliest Monster Hounds of Britain in 1127.

Could the modern Beast of Dartmoor, feline or canine, be no more than the latest trend in the Dartmoor folklore? The author believes so, and this book is intended to prove it.