Witchcraft in England, 1558-1618

What did the English truly believe about witches—and how did those beliefs find expression in accusations, trials, pamphlets, sermons, drama, and popular imagination?

Barbara Rosen’s Witchcraft in England, 1558–1618 gathers an extraordinary range of primary sources from the formative decades of the English witch persecutions. Covering the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, the volume allows the voices of the period to speak directly: accused witches and their neighbors, magistrates and clergymen, demonologists and skeptics, playwrights and pamphleteers.

The selections include trial narratives, confessions, legal and theological writings, contemporary accounts of possession and bewitchment, and literary treatments of witchcraft. Together they reveal a culture in which malefic magic, familiar spirits, demonic temptation, village conflict, religious anxiety, and political authority became dangerously entangled. The result is not merely a history of prosecution, but a vivid documentary portrait of how witchcraft was imagined, debated, performed, and punished in early modern England.

Rosen’s editorial commentary provides essential historical context while preserving the immediacy—and often the strangeness—of the original texts. Particularly valuable are the accounts of alleged familiars, magical injury, spectral encounters, possession, and the social tensions underlying accusations.

An indispensable sourcebook for the study of English witchcraft, demonology, folklore, gender, religion, and early modern culture, this volume will appeal equally to scholars and to serious readers seeking direct access to the documents that shaped the English witch trials.

A foundational addition to any library devoted to witchcraft, magic, demonology, or the occult history of Britain.