Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

'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

Helena Scheuberin * Anny Sampson * Gillie Duncan
Kari Edisdattar * Bess Clarke * Tatabe of Salem *
Marie-Catherine Cadire * Nellie Duncan
Stormy Daniels

These are their stories

'Thought-provoking and timely... Searing'
Jessie Childs, The Times

The world ofwitch-huntsandwitch trialssounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenlightened, brutal age. However, we often hear witch-hunt in todays 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.

InWitchcraft a stunning hardback with 16 pages of beautiful illustrations Professor Marion Gibson uses thirteen significant trials to tell theglobal historyof witchcraft and witch-hunts. As well as exploring the origins of witch-hunts through some of themost famous trialsfrom 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 tellsthe 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.

Author Bio

Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of seven academic books on witches in history and literature:Reading Witchcraft; Possession, Puritanism, and Print;Witchcraft Myths in American Culture; Imagining the Pagan Past;Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft;Witchcraft: The Basicsand, with Jo Esra,Shakespeares Demonology. Marion has also edited five books for publishers such as Routledge and Ashgate, published around twenty chapters and articles, and she is General Editor of the seriesElements in Magicfor Cambridge University Press.Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trialsis her most recent work.