Salem Witchcraft

$37.00

Robert Calef’s work, originally printed in 1700 in London, is composed of five parts covering various aspects of witchcraft: an account of the sufferings of Margaret Rule, written by the Rev. Cotton Mather; several letters to the author, etc. and his reply relating to witchcraft; the differences between the inhabitants of Salem Village, and Mr. Parris, their minister in New England; letters of a gentleman uninterested, endeavoring to prove the received opinions about witchcraft to be orthodox—with short essays to their answers; a short historical account of matters of fact in that affair to which is added a postscript related to a book entitled The Life of Sir Wm. Phips. Mr. Calef was a merchant in Boston and died in 1720. Cotton Mather’s work is subtitled: Tryalls of Several Witches lately executed in New England: and of several remarkable curiosities therein occurring. It covers such topics as enchantments encountered; “an hortatory [sic] and necessary address to a country now extraordinarily alarum’d [sic] by the wrath of the devil;” “a narrative of an apparition which a gentleman in Boston, had of his brother, just then murthered [sic] in London;” and “a modern instance of witches, discovered and condemned in a tryal [sic], before that celebrated judg[e], Sir Matthew Hale.” The appendix gives a list of names of people who died on Gallows Hill in 1692 and information on children accused of witchcraft. Mather’s work was originally printed in 1693. These two works were brought together by Mr. Fowler and published in 1861. A new every-name index has been added to this reprint.

Samuel P. Fowler

(1861, 1992), 2012, 5½x8½, paper, index, 462 pp.

ISBN: 9781556136375

101-F0637