Witchfinders: a Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy

US EDITION

Harvard University Press >

'Witchfinders tells the gripping and important story of England's biggest witch-hunt. The available information is perhaps without parallel in its detail, density, and inherent pathos. And Gaskill puts it together with very great skill. The result is a ground-level, step-by-step portrayal of a sort not seen elsewhere in the enormous literature on witchcraft history'.
John Demos, Professor of History, Yale University

'An absorbing account of a critical phase in the history of witchcraft persecution . . . It is a fine achievement. Gaskill has scoured local and national archives for every scrap of surviving evidence and presented his findings in an intelligent, meticulously documented and highly readable way. The East Anglian landscape, the hardships of rural life, and the hideous drama of trials and executions are all evoked vividly . . . As persuasive an account of the whole grisly episode as we are ever likely to get.'
Sir Keith Thomas, New York Review of Books

'Thoroughly researched and well written . . . Witchfinders presents to twenty-first-century readers a vividly drawn portrait of an alien world in which bugs and mice could become Satan's messengers, women could credibly describe having sexual intercourse with the devil and at least 250 people could be jailed for witchcraft.'
Mary Beth Norton, New York Times

'A riveting account of the hunt for witches in East Anglia duing the mid-1640s . . . Gaskill recounts with graphic detail the accusations, the interrogations, and prurient searches for devil's marks, the tortures and executions'.
Michael Kenney, Boston Globe

'Gaskill has written a chronicle of evil all the more haunting for his warning that the unreasoning violence spawned by conflicting religious ideologies remains a present and formidable threat in the age of technology . . . chilling'.
Muriel Dobbin, Washington Times

'Malcolm Gaskill chronicles this chilling tale of hysteria and scapegoating, bolstering his narrative with exhaustive research and meticulous detail'.
Chuck Leddy, Washington Post

'Gaskill shows Hopkins as a man of his times, a religious zealot who tapped into his neighbours' deepest prejudices, and treats the entire episode as a cautionary tale about ideology run amok'.
Maclean's

'Full-blooded . . . engrossing'.
Peter Steinfels, New York Times