After years of sporadic interest in the 1692 trials, Roach became obsessed with the subject after a 1975 trip to Salem itself. Her resulting history, The Salem Witch Trials: a Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege, called “a virtual encyclopedia of the entire affair,” and “a Bible of the witch trials,” led to her stint as a sub-editor for the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, and membership in the Gallows Hill Group that verified the site of the 1692 hangings, one of Archaeology magazine’s Top Ten discoveries of 2016. Her most recent book to date presents biographies of a half dozen of the major players in the tragedy, giving voices to women who, save for the tragedy, would likely have been lost to history.
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Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials
ByMarilynne K. Roach,
What is my book about?
Six Women of Salemis the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as…
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The books I picked & why
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt
ByBernard Rosenthal,
Why did I love this book?
This edition of the actual court papers provides not only a more accurate transcription, but also adds previously unpublished documents, background material, and extensive notes that both clarifies obscurities and identifies the individuals who wrote even the unsigned manuscripts. (Disclaimer: I was one of the project’s sub-editors.)
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt
ByBernard Rosenthal,
Why should I read it?
2authors pickedRecords of the Salem Witch-Huntas one of their favorite books, and they sharewhy you should read it.
What is this book about?
This book represents a comprehensive record of all legal documents pertaining to the Salem witch trials, in chronological order. Numerous manuscripts, as well as records published in earlier books that were overlooked in other editions, offer a comprehensive narrative account of the events of 1692-3, with supplementary materials stretching as far as the mid-18th century. The book can be used as a reference book or read as an unfolding narrative. All legal records are newly transcribed, and included in this edition is a historical introduction, a legal introduction, and a linguistic introduction. Manuscripts are accompanied by notes that, in many…
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The Salem witch trials
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Chicago
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Narratives Of The Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706
ByGeorge Lincoln Burr,
Why did I love this book?
This collection of contemporary 17th century works covering (mostly New England) witch-related cases before, during and after the 1692 trials was one of the earliest sources I discovered at my local public library back in the early 1960s. It provides a window into the varying reactions people had to the uncanny and what they did about it.
1author pickedNarratives Of The Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706as one of their favorite books, and they sharewhy you should read it.
What is this book about?
This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.
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New England
Salem
The indigenous peoples of the Americas
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History
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Witchcraft at Salem
ByChadwick Hansen,
Why did I love this book?
While I do not agree with all of the author’s conclusions, this book showed me the prevalence of folk-charms in the culture, as well as the psychological reactions humans have to stress that could explain some of what happened with the “bewitched.”
Witchcraft at Salem
ByChadwick Hansen,
Why should I read it?
1author pickedWitchcraft at Salemas one of their favorite books, and they sharewhy you should read it.
What is this book about?
Trial documents and contemporary narratives are used in this discussion of the practice of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England.
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Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
ByJohn Putnam Demos,
Why did I love this book?
This study of suspected New England witch cases from a sociological angle, made the study of the Salem witch trials respectable again after decades of the topic being dismissed as beneath the notice of serious scholarship.
Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England
ByJohn Putnam Demos,
Why should I read it?
4authors pickedEntertaining Satanas one of their favorite books, and they sharewhy you should read it.
What is this book about?
In the first edition of the Bancroft Prize-winning Entertaining Satan, John Putnam Demos presented an entirely new perspective on American witchcraft. By investigating the surviving historical documents of over a hundred actual witchcraft cases, he vividly recreated the world of New England during the witchcraft trials and brought to light fascinating information on the role of witchcraft in early American culture. Now Demos has revisited his original work and updated it to illustrate why these early Americans' strange views on witchcraft still matter to us today. He provides a new preface that puts forth a broader overview of witchcraft and…
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In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
ByMary Beth Norton,
Why did I love this book?
While there is no one all-encompassing reason the 1692 panic proceeded as it did, Norton’s account presents the terrors and violence of the earthly warfare that dominated so many lives at that time, influenced everyone one else, and which had been largely ignored by previous accounts of the trials.
In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
ByMary Beth Norton,
Why should I read it?
3authors pickedIn the Devil's Snareas one of their favorite books, and they sharewhy you should read it.
What is this book about?
Award-winning historian Mary Beth Norton reexamines the Salem witch trials in thisstartlingly original, meticulously researched, and utterly riveting study.
In 1692 the people of Massachusetts were living in fear, and not solely of satanic afflictions. Horrifyingly violent Indian attacks had all but emptied the northern frontier of settlers, and many traumatized refugees—including the main accusers of witches—had fled to communities like Salem. Meanwhile the colony’s leaders, defensive about their own failure to protect the frontier, pondered how God’s people could be suffering at the hands of savages. Struck by the similarities between what the refugees had witnessed and what the…
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Don't forget about my Book 😀
Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials
ByMarilynne K. Roach,
What is my book about?
Six Women of Salemis the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were put to death and the five who perished in prison, around 200 individuals had been accused, at least seventy had been "afflicted," and the populations of over 20 communities drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex—ordinary folk as well as the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev, Cotton Mather called “a desolation of names.”
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You might also like...
American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and the Battles of Lev Gleason
ByBrett Dakin,
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Sponsored by Brett DakinAuthor
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AuthorLawyerTravelerDog loverReaderSwimmer
Brett's 3 favorite reads in 2023
What is my book about?
Meet Lev Gleason, a real-life comics superhero! Gleason was a titan among Golden Age comics publishers who fought back against the censorship campaigns and paranoia of the Red Scare. After dropping out of Harvard to fight in World War I in France, Gleason moved to New York City and eventually made it big with groundbreaking titles like Daredevil and Crime Does Not Pay.
Brett Dakin, Gleason's great-nephew, opens up the family archives—and the files of the FBI—to take you on a journey through the publisher's life and career. In American Daredevil, you'll learn the truth about Gleason's rapid rise…
American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and the Battles of Lev Gleason
ByBrett Dakin,
What is this book about?
MEET LEV GLEASON, A REAL-LIFE COMICSSUPERHERO!
Gleason was a titan among GoldenAge comics publishers who fought back against the censorship campaigns andparanoia of the Red Scare. After dropping out of Harvard to fight in France,Gleason moved to New York City and eventually made it big with groundbreakingtitles like Daredevil and Crime Does NotPay.
Brett Dakin, Gleason's great-nephew,opens up the family archives-and the files of the FBI-to take you on a journeythrough the publisher's life and career. In American Daredevil, you'll learn thetruth about Gleason's rapid rise to the top of comics,…
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Comics
Superheros
The Red Scare
Genres
Biographies
Memoirs
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5 book lists we think you will like!
Witch hunting in Colonial America
17th century America
Female magic, witches, potions and spells
The story behind the Salem Witch Trials
The 1692 “witch” hunts in Salem Village
Interested inthe Salem witch trials,witchcraft,andNew England?
Evidence points to several factors that may have contributed to the mass hysteria: “An influx of refugees from King William's War with French colonists, a recent smallpox epidemic, the threat of attack from Native Americans, a growing rivalry with the neighboring seaport of Salem Town, and the simmering tensions ...
Accusations followed, often escalating to convictions and executions. The Salem witch trials and executions came about as the result of a combination of church politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, all of which unfolded in a vacuum of political authority.
Tituba of Salem Village (1956), a children's book by Ann Petry. The Witchcraft of Salem Village (1956), a children's book by Shirley Jackson. The Crucible (1961), an opera by Robert Ward (1917–2013), based on the 1952 play by Arthur Miller.
Massachusetts recognizes harm done, judges and accusers apologize. After the hysteria was over, Massachusetts recognized the witch trials for what they were and began a centuries-long process of atonement. Judges, juries, and accusers publicly apologized, but the apologies were of little comfort to affected families.
It has been suggested Mary Sibley died circa 1761, which would have made her approximately 100 years old. Additional note: The name of the main female protagonist in the television show Salem is Mary Sibley, “the most powerful witch in Salem.” The character is fiction and has no relationship to historic fact.
On March 23, 1692, a warrant was issued for the arrest of four-year-old Dorothy Good of Salem Village on “suspition of acts of Witchcraft.” She was taken into custody the next day and jailed with her mother, Sarah, who had been accused of the same capital crime three weeks earlier.
The town physician, Doctor Griggs, who has not been able to determine why Betty is ill, suggests witchcraft as a possible cause. Parris, distraught and troubled because he knows that Abigail has not been entirely truthful regarding her activities in the woods, confronts Abigail.
As 1692 passed into 1693, the hysteria began to lose steam. The governor of the colony, upon hearing that his own wife was accused of witchcraft ordered an end to the trials.
Women alone, single women or widows, poor women, old women, foreign women, melancholic women, healing women, the spectrum could be varied. The women without men, single women and widows, older than forty, could easily be considered to be witches, but many were also married, young...
They were expected to spend most of their time doing chores and studying the Bible. This lack of stimulation naturally led to boredom. And this boredom may help to explain why Betty Parris and Abigail Williams became so interested in fortune-telling, which was allegedly introduced to them by a slave named Tituba.
In 1943, pediatrician and amateur historian Ernest Caulfield argued that the girls suffered from hysteria, a psychological illness of excess emotion with various odd physical manifestations ("Pediatric Aspects of the Salem Witchcraft Tragedy," Am J Dis Child. 1943;65(5):788-802).
This haunting historical novel tells the story of one of the first women to be tried and hanged in the Salem witch trials amid the escalating hysteria and tyranny of a dark period in Puritan New England.
The Salem witchcraft crisis had European origins. During the most active period of witch hunts from 1400 to 1775, religious upheaval, warfare, political tensions and economic dislocation led to waves of persecutions and scapegoating in Europe and its colonies.
The most famous of these trials were the Salem witch trials in 1692. Two women were acquitted of witchcraft charges in the Province of Pennsylvania in 1683 after a trial in Philadelphia before William Penn.
Introduction: My name is Van Hayes, I am a thankful, friendly, smiling, calm, powerful, fine, enthusiastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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