Books like Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England by Peter Elmer

The Crucible is a play by Arthur Miller that dramatizes the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693, reflecting on McCarthyism and American history through allegory.

Grade 11

Exposing the social dynamics of 17th‑century witchcraft, this study uses legal records to reveal how belief, class, and gender shaped prosecutions and the decline of fear across Britain.

The essays in this handbook, written by leading scholars working in the rapidly developing field of witchcraft studies, explore the historical literature regarding witch beliefs and witch trials in Europe and colonial America between the early fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. These beliefs provided the basis for defining witchcraft as a secular and ecclesiastical crime and prosecuting tens of thousands of women and men for this offence. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions. These essays study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas.