The Ghost: A Cultural History ‘Ghosts are woven into the very fabric of our lives’. The evolution of a persistent human fear. In the catalogue of things that might be of enough concern for magical countermeasures to be necessary, the ghost is perhaps one of the most persistent. In this highly readable and entertaining book,…
The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment Michael Hunter, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2020 The English Protestant faith, having outlawed Catholicism and banned all forms of ‘Superstititious’ Catholic practices, apparently found itself in the latter part of the 17th century in a spot of bother with the freethinkers. Beleagured by controversies…
The Routledge History of Medieval Magic The Routledge History of Medieval Magic Sophie Page & Catherine Rider (Eds) Routledge 2019. A giant compendium of magic. This thick volume of papers brings together recent writing on a wide range of magical topics by both established and new scholars in the discipline. Its range is immense. Richard…
A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War Owen Davies, Oxford University Press, 2018 Small but perfectly formed. In keeping with the standard of publication we have come to expect from Professor Owen Davies, this is…
Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic, Bill Griffiths, 1996; reprinted 2012. An immersive and joyously erudite foray into the weirder parts of Anglo-Saxon life – but no index! The late Dr Bill Griffiths was, in no particular order: a poet, an Anglo Saxon scholar and an expert on the dialects of north-east England….
Material approaches to Roman Magic: Occult objects and Supernatural Substances Material approaches to Roman Magic: Occult objects and Supernatural Substances. Adam Parker and Stuart McKie, TRAC, Oxbow, 2018 Stern theoreticians wrestle with the nebulous and inconclusive. The back cover synopsis of this volume sums up, somewhat long-windedly, the need to extend archaeological research…
Mummies Cannibals and Vampires by Richard Sugg, Routledge, second edition, 2016. An enormous heap of curious information. Does that suggest that your devoted reviewer has been less than wholly entranced by Richard Sugg’s opus? It is all too terribly true. Dr Sugg (his Twitter handle) has amassed a large amount of information on a completely…
Illustrated Symbols and Emblems of the Jewish, Early Christian, Greek, Latin and Modern Churches. HJ Smith 1900; Kessinger Library Reprints 2010 A picture book for lockdown 2.0 Despite the not so catchy title, this scanned reproduction is a charming late-Victorian take on the immense amount of iconography to be found in…
Witchcraft lasted longer than you might think. That is the premise of this study of witchcraft, curses, cunning folk and the fear of witches in the UK from 1800 onwards. If you come away from this book with one idea it is how incredibly persistent and widespread the belief in witchcraft was in the UK….
Newes from Scotland, James Stuart; King James VI of Scotland, 1591. Possibly ghost written by James Carmichael. Bodley Head, reprint, 1924; Aziloth Books; Illustrated Edition, 2012 (with Daemonologie) Jacobean tabloid journalism at its finest. I feel a pause might now be necessary to allow the more traditional-minded of our readers to…
The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic. Ralph Merrifield, Batsford, 1987 The Daddy of them all. ‘ what is needed is an open mind and appreciation of the great diversity of human behaviour’ In 1987, Ralph Merrifield, retired archaeologist and recognised authority on Roman London, set out to publish, for the first time, a systematic review…
Grimoires, A History of Magic Books. Owen Davies, OUP 2009. ‘…for many down the millennia and across the globe no books have been more feared than grimoires.’ Thus Owen Davies introduces his exhaustive history of Magic Books, a complex and extensive survey of what, once one begins to pursue it, seems an endless road. That…
Magical House Protection: the Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft. Brian Hoggard, Berghahn, 2019. A solidly researched synthesis of the archaeological information to date. Brian Hoggard’s 2019 book presents a thorough and vastly increased collation of information on the specific area of magical house protection, a subject first introduced to the public as barely more than a single…
The Book of English Magic. Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate. Hodder, 2009. Fun and games for a wet weekend in lockdown (or any other time) I was slightly surprised when I first opened my copy of this book and found that it was written not by historians but by a psychotherapist (Carr-Gomm) and a man…
Dull, with intervals of brilliance: The Handbook of Folklore, Traditional Beliefs, Practices, Customs, Stories and Sayings. Charlotte Sophia Burne, London 1913. I have to admit to readers that, even in a sternly enforced lockdown, I found this book hard to get into. My usual practice on reviewing a book is to read it (or re-read:…
The Discoverie of Witchcraft, wherein the Lewde dealing of Witches and Witchmongers is notablie detected, in sixteen books … whereunto is added a Treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Devils. Reginald Scot. William Brome, London, 1584. ‘How diverse great clarkes and good authors have been abused in this matter of spirits…
Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course. Roberta Gilchrist, Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2012; paperback 2018. The aim of this book, as stated on its rear cover, is to explore how medieval life was actually lived, from birth to death and covering every aspect of the life course in between. It is, as Professor Gilchrist notes…
The Trotula Edited and Translated by Monica H. Green. University of Pennsylvania Press 2001 An accessible English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine. This modest paperback book represents the pared-back core of a much larger academic work by Professor Green, who in 2001 published a hardback Latin – English translation, with the texts…
Magic in Medieval Manuscripts, Sophie Page, 2004; expanded hardback edition by British Library 2017. Small but perfectly formed: this books is a little jewel to brighten the dark January evenings. This is not a manual of spells and charms, though a number are included, nor is it simply a picture book, though the illustrations are…
Begun in 1604 and published in 1611, the King James Version became the Authorised Version of the Bible, and has never been out of print. Rebecca Ireland looks at it in the context of the study of magic and folklore. This monumental work of translation and refinement of all the Biblical texts known to exist…
As part of our series looking at older books, Rebecca Ireland talks about Ella Mary Leather’s classic collection of Herefordshire folktales. If local informants can be believed witches were rife in Herefordshire in the 19th century; cows were cursed or cured; the evil eye was a constant threat, and simply offending a neighbour could lead…
Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine takes an in-depth look at the fascination that the bodies of criminals and their means of execution have exercised over the human mind for many centuries. In the Roman era, the blood of gladiators was believed to have curative properties…