Witchland

‘Gibson is an immensely knowledgeable and engaging guide to a bizarre historical phenomenon, with a knack for teasing out the individual stories behind the national panic, and her case study-based approach reveals the importance of local dynamics’ * The Times *
‘Terrifying but compulsive … I finished this wonderful book feeling less like a voyeur of historic pain and more like someone who has received a timely reminder about the life-and-death importance of never allowing yourself to get caught up in the latest criminal conspiracy’ * Daily Mail, Book of the Week *
‘No historian before Marion Gibson has managed to convey so well the lived reality of British witch trials at the local level, rooting them vividly and perceptively both in their physical landscapes and in the identities and experiences of seventeenth-century villagers and townspeople. This is as close to an eye-witness view of them as we are likely to get’ – Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch
‘Witchland is a remarkable feat of scholarship and empathy, a journey through 1640s Britain to explore an outbreak of “well-meaning mass murder.” Marion Gibson painstakingly excavates and recenters the lives of the victims; she proves this panic was neither inevitable nor inexplicable and reminds us that resistance was – and is – possible. A chilling and timely read!’ – Shelley Puhak, author of The Blood Countess and The Dark Queens
‘Witchland gives witches back their names. This book gives us history with its feet on the ground, harrowing in its wealth of ordinary details. Gibson dispels the fog of centuries, allowing us to glimpse the real people of a terrible era’ – Rebecca Romney, author of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf
‘A disturbing portrait of centuries-old paranoia that speaks to our times… The stories of how men and women ran afoul of their neighbors and how the witch hunters bamboozled superstitious villagers into believing fellow townspeople collaborated with the devil makes for arresting reading’ * Kirkus Reviews *
‘Gibson offers an astounding revisitation of the witch panic that swept through Britain during the English Civil War … It’s a tour-de-force of archival research and an unsettling cautionary tale’ * Publishers Weekly *
‘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 Witches, on Witchcraft
‘Thought-provoking and timely … Searing’ – Jessie Childs * The Times, on Witchcraft *
‘A vital and vivid study on the history of witch trials. Fantastic’ – Anya Bergman, author of The Witches of Vardo, on Witchcraft

Marion Gibson is Emerita Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter. She has 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 thirty years ago. She was so excited by the story that she forgot to give the book back.

She is the author of nine books on witches in history and literature, most recently Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials and The Witches of St Osyth. She lives in Devon.

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