Witching Editions
Primary-source pamphlets and accounts from witching in early modern England, transcribed in full and ready to read.
The texts behind the histories
Before a witchcraft case becomes a record in an archive, it is a story in a text. The Witching Editions bring those texts into the research archive. Transcribed as part of the Witches in Early Modern England research project, these early modern works include legal examinations, printed narratives, religious controversies, and reports assembled as evidence for the existence of spirits.
Together, they reveal the extraordinary range of ways witchcraft was described and understood. There are stories of possession and counterfeit possession, illness and healing, demonic pacts and familiars, and neighbourhood disputes that became accusations. Their accounts come from children, women, ministers, physicians, judges, examiners, and witnesses. Some seek to establish that witchcraft was real; others expose fraud, defend religious positions, document legal proceedings, or attempt to explain what resisted ordinary explanation.
Read together, the editions reveal how extraordinary experiences became evidence and provide the textual foundation for much of the research now brought together in Witching. The archive allows those connections to be searched, mapped, classified, and compared; the Editions return the reader to the words themselves.