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Table of Contents
About The Book
'These stories of witchcraft, true and vividly told, demonstrate the potent reality of belief in evil and how in any era or place fear can be weaponised and marginal people, mostly women, labelled as wicked and dangerous. Together they comprise not just a history of witchcraft but a cautionary tale’
Malcolm Gaskill, author of The Ruin of All Witches
The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear ‘witch-hunt’ in today’s media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar. Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018.
In Witchcraft – a stunning hardback with 16 pages of beautiful illustrations – Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen significant trials to tell the global history of witchcraft and witch-hunts. As well as exploring the origins of witch-hunts through some of the most famous trials from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, it takes us in new and surprising directions.
It shows us how witchcraft was reimagined by lawyers and radical historians in France, how suspicions of sorcery led to murder in Jazz Age Pennsylvania, the effects of colonialism and Christian missionary zeal on ‘witches’ in Africa, and how even today a witch trial can come in many guises.
Professor Gibson also tells the stories of the ‘witches’ – mostly women like Helena Scheuberin, Anny Sampson and Joan Wright, whose stories have too often been overshadowed by those of the powerful men, such as King James I and ‘Witchfinder General’ Matthew Hopkins, who hounded them.
Once a tool invented by demonologists to hurt and silence their enemies, witch trials have been twisted and transformed over the course of history and the lines between witch and witch-hunter blurred. For the fortunate, a witch-hunt is just a metaphor, but, as this book makes clear, witches are truly still on trial.
Helena Scheuberin * Anny Sampson * Gillie Duncan
Kari Edisdattar * Bess Clarke * Tatabe of Salem *
Marie-Catherine Cadière * Nellie Duncan
Stormy Daniels
These are their stories
'Thought-provoking and timely... Searing'
Jessie Childs, The Times
Malcolm Gaskill, author of The Ruin of All Witches
The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear ‘witch-hunt’ in today’s media, and the misogyny that shaped witch trials is all too familiar. Three women were prosecuted under a version of the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 2018.
In Witchcraft – a stunning hardback with 16 pages of beautiful illustrations – Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen significant trials to tell the global history of witchcraft and witch-hunts. As well as exploring the origins of witch-hunts through some of the most famous trials from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, it takes us in new and surprising directions.
It shows us how witchcraft was reimagined by lawyers and radical historians in France, how suspicions of sorcery led to murder in Jazz Age Pennsylvania, the effects of colonialism and Christian missionary zeal on ‘witches’ in Africa, and how even today a witch trial can come in many guises.
Professor Gibson also tells the stories of the ‘witches’ – mostly women like Helena Scheuberin, Anny Sampson and Joan Wright, whose stories have too often been overshadowed by those of the powerful men, such as King James I and ‘Witchfinder General’ Matthew Hopkins, who hounded them.
Once a tool invented by demonologists to hurt and silence their enemies, witch trials have been twisted and transformed over the course of history and the lines between witch and witch-hunter blurred. For the fortunate, a witch-hunt is just a metaphor, but, as this book makes clear, witches are truly still on trial.
Helena Scheuberin * Anny Sampson * Gillie Duncan
Kari Edisdattar * Bess Clarke * Tatabe of Salem *
Marie-Catherine Cadière * Nellie Duncan
Stormy Daniels
These are their stories
'Thought-provoking and timely... Searing'
Jessie Childs, The Times
About The Author
Photograph by Neil Spence
Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter, UK. She's been thinking about witches in history since she read her first account of a witch trial in a book lent to her on a dark, rainy afternoon in November 1991. She was so excited by the story that she forgot to give the book back. Thirty years on, she is the author of nine books on witches in history and literature. Her most recent book is The Witches of St Osyth for Cambridge University Press.
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (June 22, 2023)
- Length: 320 pages
- ISBN13: 9781398508507
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Raves and Reviews
'These stories of witchcraft, true and vividly told, demonstrate the potent reality of belief in evil and how in any era or place fear can be weaponised and marginal people, mostly women, labelled as wicked and dangerous. Together they comprise not just a history of witchcraft but a cautionary tale of the uncomfortably human habits of paranoia and persecution'
– Malcolm Gaskill, author of The Ruin of All Witches
'It is wonderful to come across a book that breathes such fresh life and energy into a well-worked subject, covering a huge range of time and space with a unified, passionate and convincing message. Any expert is going to learn something new from it, any newcomer to be enthralled and motivated'
– Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch
'Thought-provoking and timely... Searing'
– Jessie Childs, The Times
'A vital and vivid study on the history of witch trials. Fantastic’
– Anya Bergman, author of The Witches of Vardo
’Thirteen witch trials are brought vividly to life in Gibson’s wide-ranging book’
– Daily Mail
'Inventive and compelling... A work of restitution and historical reparation, an attempt to give voice to those who have been silenced over the centuries'
– Laura Kounine, Times Literary Supplement
'The trials of the accused people in Witchcraft return to us, in detail, lives about which we might otherwise know nothing'
– New Yorker
'By putting the focus on a selection of history's most fascinating - and disturbing - witch trials, the author simultaneously tells the wider history of the witch hunts, from the fifteenth century to the present day. It is a story at once archaic and shockingly modern. A brilliant book'
– Tracy Borman
'Erudite, insightful and provocative. This investigation of witch trials – and of the long shadow cast by women’s vilification as witches over our modern lives – is essential, rage-inducing reading'
– Annie Garthwaite, author of Cecily and The King's Mother
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Witchcraft Hardcover 9781398508507
- Author Photo (jpg): Marion Gibson Photograph by Neil Spence(0.1 MB)
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