"Witchland is a remarkable feat of scholarship and empathy, a journey through 1640s Britain to explore an outbreak of “well-meaning mass murder.” Marion Gibson painstakingly excavates and recenters the lives of the victims; she proves this panic was neither inevitable nor inexplicable and reminds us that resistance was – and is – possible. A chilling and timely read!"
—Shelley Puhak, author of The Blood Countess

“A disturbing portrait of centuries-old paranoia that speaks to our times…The stories of how men and women ran afoul of their neighbors and how the witch hunters bamboozled superstitious villagers into believing fellow townspeople collaborated with the devil makes for arresting reading.”—Kirkus Reviews

"Historian Gibson (Witchcraft) offers an astounding revisitation of the witch panic that swept through Britain during the English Civil War. [...] It’s a tour-de-force of archival research and an unsettling cautionary tale."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Witchland gives witches back their names. This book gives us history with its feet on the ground, harrowing in its wealth of ordinary details. Gibson dispels the fog of centuries, allowing us to glimpse the real people of a terrible era."
—Rebecca Romney, author of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf

"No historian before Marion Gibson has managed to convey so well the lived reality of British witch trials at the local level, rooting them vividly and perceptively both in their physical landscapes and in the identities and experiences of seventeenth-century villagers and townspeople. This is as close to an eye-witness view of them as we are likely to get."
—Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch and Oliver Cromwell

Praise for Witchcraft
National Bestseller
A New Yorker Best Book of 2024

“The trials of the accused people in Witchcraft return to us, in detail, lives about which we might otherwise know nothing.”
—The New Yorker  

“Belong[s] firmly within the contemporary examination of the United States’ ongoing and multifaceted satanic panic.” 
—The Washington Post

“Thought-provoking and timely... Searing.”
—The Times
 
“Inventive and compelling... A work of restitution and historical reparation, an attempt to give voice to those who have been silenced over the centuries.”
—Times Literary Supplement
 
“From demonology to royal ascensions, Gibson demonstrates how identity politics, power plays and cultural differences all crashed together to allow these historic injustices to occur… A well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruellest moments in history.”
—Buzz Magazine
 
“Thirteen witch trials are brought vividly to life in Gibson’s wide-ranging book”
—Daily Mail

“Gibson tells the story of the women and men whom those in power tried to silence — sometimes permanently.” 
—BookRiot

“A fascinating and revelatory look at real witch hunts…[Gibson] fashion[s] a book that is at once readable and informative, an energetic and declarative statement on a particular brand of cruelty that is at its most historically hysterical and rotten.” 
—BookReporter