British Library | Witch-Hunt: A History of Persecution @britishlibrary | Uploaded July 2024 | Updated October 2024, 20 hours ago.
This event took place on 4 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
The English Witch Trials raged across the country for three centuries, engulfing the lives of thousands of ordinary people and seeing the execution of five-hundred victims. The national witch paranoia began in the Mediaeval period, reached its peak during the reign of Elizabeth I and was only formally outlawed by Parliament in 1735. The vast majority of those accused were older women, living alone or widowed, often poor and disabled.
This event addresses the dark history of mistrust, incrimination and public violence that all too often led to the gallows. It asks why the trials came to an end in England and reflects on the fact that we are spared having to suffer the experience of them today.
Our panel of leading historians will delve into the forces that fueled the violence and consider its legacy on legal history, religious belief and attitudes towards those perceived as ‘other’.
Chaired by critic, academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari.
Malcolm Gaskill is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. One of Britain's leading experts in the history of witchcraft, his works include the highly-acclaimed Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy and Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans. In 2010, Malcolm was a visiting fellow in North American studies at the Eccles Centre of the British Library, where he conducted research for his book Between Two Worlds. In November 2021, Allen Lane published his most recent book The Ruin of All Witches.
Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter. She is the author of seven books on witches in history and literature including: Reading Witchcraft (Routledge, 1999), Possession, Puritanism and Print (Pickering and Chatto, 2006), Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft (Routledge, 2017) and with Jo Esra Shakespeare’s Demonology (Bloomsbury, 2014). Her latest book Witchcraft A History in Thirteen Trials was published by Simon & Schuster in June 2023.
Shahidha Bari is a professor at London College of Fashion (University of the Arts London). She has presented Inside Culture on BBC Two and hosts BBC Radio Three’s Arts and Ideas programme Free Thinking. Her writing has appeared in Aeon, Art Review, The Financial Times, Frieze art magazine, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and others. Shahidha is a trustee for the Brontë Society and Art Night and has been a judge for the Forward Poetry Prizes, the Baillie Gifford Prize, the PEN Hessell-Tiltman History Prize and the 2022 Booker Prize. She is the author of Dressed: A Philosophy of Clothes.
This event took place on 4 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.
The English Witch Trials raged across the country for three centuries, engulfing the lives of thousands of ordinary people and seeing the execution of five-hundred victims. The national witch paranoia began in the Mediaeval period, reached its peak during the reign of Elizabeth I and was only formally outlawed by Parliament in 1735. The vast majority of those accused were older women, living alone or widowed, often poor and disabled.
This event addresses the dark history of mistrust, incrimination and public violence that all too often led to the gallows. It asks why the trials came to an end in England and reflects on the fact that we are spared having to suffer the experience of them today.
Our panel of leading historians will delve into the forces that fueled the violence and consider its legacy on legal history, religious belief and attitudes towards those perceived as ‘other’.
Chaired by critic, academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari.
Malcolm Gaskill is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. One of Britain's leading experts in the history of witchcraft, his works include the highly-acclaimed Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy and Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans. In 2010, Malcolm was a visiting fellow in North American studies at the Eccles Centre of the British Library, where he conducted research for his book Between Two Worlds. In November 2021, Allen Lane published his most recent book The Ruin of All Witches.
Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter. She is the author of seven books on witches in history and literature including: Reading Witchcraft (Routledge, 1999), Possession, Puritanism and Print (Pickering and Chatto, 2006), Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft (Routledge, 2017) and with Jo Esra Shakespeare’s Demonology (Bloomsbury, 2014). Her latest book Witchcraft A History in Thirteen Trials was published by Simon & Schuster in June 2023.
Shahidha Bari is a professor at London College of Fashion (University of the Arts London). She has presented Inside Culture on BBC Two and hosts BBC Radio Three’s Arts and Ideas programme Free Thinking. Her writing has appeared in Aeon, Art Review, The Financial Times, Frieze art magazine, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and others. Shahidha is a trustee for the Brontë Society and Art Night and has been a judge for the Forward Poetry Prizes, the Baillie Gifford Prize, the PEN Hessell-Tiltman History Prize and the 2022 Booker Prize. She is the author of Dressed: A Philosophy of Clothes.
