Five Books for Beginners
Jenny
jennyg@compuserve.com
Fri Mar 12 15:14:38 1999
A long time ago (in a Galaxy far, far away...) Greyhawk asked us to recommend lists of books for beginners, intermediate students, and advanced ones.  Here are mine, for people interested in historical witchcraft.  (I'm not insanely slow.  I'm just... just... conducting a scientific experiment:  "Testing the Temporal Limits of the Maxim, 'Better Late Than Never'.")*p*****************************p*Five Books for Beginners*p*The five books I'd recommend focus on different aspects of the Burning Times -- a general survey;  a study of a specific panic;  information on Pagan witches;  a text on a specialized subject (eg., medieval witchcraft);  and a selection of primary source material, to give you a feel for what the evidence looks like.*p**br*1) _The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe_ by Brian Levack.  The best survey of the new information collected from trial record studies.  Not a particularly innovative or speculative book, but it does a fantastic job of explaining what we now know about witchcraft.  It clears up much of the misinformation spread in badly researched books, like Anne Llewellyn Barstow's _Witchcraze_.*p*2) _The Salem Witchcraft Trials:  A Legal History_ by Peter Charles Hoffer.  The title's misleading.  This is a general introduction (suitable for high school students, even) to the Salem panic.  Hoffer does a brilliant job of summarizing the complex social, legal, and religious factors at work in the trials.  Experts may find it a bit superficial -- it's intended for beginners and doesn't go into as much detail as more advanced students might like.  However for beginners, it's unsurpassed.  And even crotchety experts will find it a pleasant review of the trials.*p*3) _The Night Battles:  Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the 16th adn 17th Centuries_ by Carlo Ginzburg.  If you only read one book on historical witchcraft, read this!  _Night Battles_ is a meticulously researched study of a group of Christo-Pagan witches, the Benandanti of northern Italy.  It's a breath-taking look at what "real" witches were like in the Burning Times.*p*4) _Witchcraft in the Middle Ages_ by Jeffrey Burton Russell.  A very readable introduction to the earliest witch trials, which does a great job of describing the beliefs that led to the Burning Times.  Traces many of the stereotypes about witches back to slanders raised against Christians (by Pagan Romans) and heretics (by Christians).*p*5) _Witchcraft in England, 1558-1618_ by Barbara Rosen.  A great selection of witchcraft pamphlets from England.  These writings are mainly accounts of trials (rather than excerpts from witch-hunting manuals, which can get extremely tedious).  Some of them are chilling, some are hilarious -- like the story of Judith Philips, "the Fairy Queen of Hampshire", an irreverent con artist who bilked her rich neighbors by claiming she could arrange meetings with the Queen of the Fairies.  For a fee...*p*