Witch stories

This collection gathers accounts of witchcraft from English history. The compiler makes no claim to have covered the whole subject. Access was limited to the holdings of the British Museum and other public libraries, since private collections, which may hold valuable material, were closed to them. Some surviving records mention only a name or a bare allusion, and the compiler hopes that owners of unpublished manuscripts might come forward for a later edition.

The author deliberately avoids a broad philosophical study of witchcraft, which would require more space than intended. Instead, each reported case is weighed against four possibilities: fraud, self-deception, actual illness, and exaggeration by the teller. Readers are left to decide for themselves how much each factor played in every case.