Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials

by Marion Gibson

These true and vividly told stories of witchcraft demonstrate the potent reality of belief in evil and how, in any era or place, fear can be weaponized, marginalizing people—mostly women—who are labeled 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 Cadière
• Nellie Duncan
• Stormy Daniels

These are their stories.

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

The world of witch-hunts and witch trials may sound archaic and fanciful, 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. The book explores the origins of witch-hunts through some of the most famous trials from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, taking 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 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, blurring the lines between witch and witch-hunter.

For the fortunate, a witch-hunt is just a metaphor, but as this book makes clear, witches are truly still on trial.

320 pages, 2 x 8pp colour plates sections; 22/06/2023