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Witchland: A Deadly Moral Panic in Seventeenth-Century Britain
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2 days and 11:53:27
10 copies available
U.S. only
The thrilling, devastating account of a moral panic that swept across Britain in the decades before the Salem Witch Trials, leaving hundreds of so-called witches dead in its wake, by acclaimed historian and bestselling author Marion Gibson.
During the English Civil War of the 1640s, a series of witch trials began in southeast England and Lowland Scotland. Fueled by religiosity, misogyny, and the economic stresses of war, the trials soon grew into a mass panic that transformed the nation—and led to the deaths of over three hundred people during a ten-year span.
Drawing on newly discovered historical documents, Gibson gives voice to the accused, whose stories were previously lost to time. Moving across England and Scotland, Witchland shows how the chaos and economic deprivation of wartime can exacerbate existing divides within communities, leaving those already without power particularly vulnerable—especially, during this time, impoverished women dependent on the goodwill of their neighbors. With each chapter focused on a different town and the lives and deaths of the people within it, Witchland is a gripping historical drama that plays out both on small scale of the town square and the large scale of the nation.
Sweeping, intimate, and dramatic, Witchland is a gripping story of polarization, persecution, and a country ripped apart by fear.
During the English Civil War of the 1640s, a series of witch trials began in southeast England and Lowland Scotland. Fueled by religiosity, misogyny, and the economic stresses of war, the trials soon grew into a mass panic that transformed the nation—and led to the deaths of over three hundred people during a ten-year span.
Drawing on newly discovered historical documents, Gibson gives voice to the accused, whose stories were previously lost to time. Moving across England and Scotland, Witchland shows how the chaos and economic deprivation of wartime can exacerbate existing divides within communities, leaving those already without power particularly vulnerable—especially, during this time, impoverished women dependent on the goodwill of their neighbors. With each chapter focused on a different town and the lives and deaths of the people within it, Witchland is a gripping historical drama that plays out both on small scale of the town square and the large scale of the nation.
Sweeping, intimate, and dramatic, Witchland is a gripping story of polarization, persecution, and a country ripped apart by fear.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication September 22, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Disclaimer: I received an ARC via Netgalley.
I was not a fan of Gibson’s Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials, mostly because while I agreed with her politics, some of it felt like a bit of a stretch, though I understood the point. I enjoyed this book far more.
Gibson looks at the witchcraft trials from the viewpoint of the victims. She focuses almost entirely on the women, detailing the diverse causes that lead the women to being arrested and charged. She also details as much as she came what came after, including those times when the women escaped, and why they were able to escape.
In many ways, it Is a good read along with Diane Purkiss’ book about the English Civil War.
What I particularly was the focus on the why and the who, not on the men who charged the women. It is a far better focus and gives the victims their due.
It would be fair to say that at times the tone is a little dry, but it does reward the reader. It also points the way to some of what Gibson covered in the Witchcraft – how people, for lack of a better term, manifest trials, cause them to be. She does from the beginning with her first case.
Not all the people accused were killed, and Gibson does include cases where the people survived the accusation, though as she readies notes finding the reason why or what happened after is not always easy. The book presents a more fleshed out picture of the trials as well as the possible motivations behind them.
I was not a fan of Gibson’s Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials, mostly because while I agreed with her politics, some of it felt like a bit of a stretch, though I understood the point. I enjoyed this book far more.
Gibson looks at the witchcraft trials from the viewpoint of the victims. She focuses almost entirely on the women, detailing the diverse causes that lead the women to being arrested and charged. She also details as much as she came what came after, including those times when the women escaped, and why they were able to escape.
In many ways, it Is a good read along with Diane Purkiss’ book about the English Civil War.
What I particularly was the focus on the why and the who, not on the men who charged the women. It is a far better focus and gives the victims their due.
It would be fair to say that at times the tone is a little dry, but it does reward the reader. It also points the way to some of what Gibson covered in the Witchcraft – how people, for lack of a better term, manifest trials, cause them to be. She does from the beginning with her first case.
Not all the people accused were killed, and Gibson does include cases where the people survived the accusation, though as she readies notes finding the reason why or what happened after is not always easy. The book presents a more fleshed out picture of the trials as well as the possible motivations behind them.
August 24, 2026
An impressive companion to Witchcraft. Whereas Witchcraft explores thirteen individual trials, Witchland focuses closely on witch-hunting in/around 1640s Britain. Highly detailed yet v accessible, with the added intrigue of Gibson uncovering a witch accused under her own name. I loved this ! 🩷
August 28, 2026
audio book still counts. I loved this!! not sure what else to say, scratched an itch & now I’m going to hyper fixate on witch hunting
August 13, 2026
Marion Gibson's Witchland is an engaging successor to her previous book, covering very similar ground. I possibly enjoyed it more because it featured 2 places I am familiar with (Newcastle and Framlingham)!
If you read a lot of non-fiction Gibson's occasionally overly emphatic style might take some getting used to: there's a lot of 'astonishingly' and 'tragically' and 'horribly', which sometimes grates: it feels like she doesn't trust the reader to recognise that bad things are bad. But her conversational style also makes for an easy read - I finished this in a handful of sittings.
If you read a lot of non-fiction Gibson's occasionally overly emphatic style might take some getting used to: there's a lot of 'astonishingly' and 'tragically' and 'horribly', which sometimes grates: it feels like she doesn't trust the reader to recognise that bad things are bad. But her conversational style also makes for an easy read - I finished this in a handful of sittings.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The 1640s were a tumultuous time in Britain. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1642-1651) pitted England’s Royalists against the Parliamentarians, while also involving the Scots Covenanters and Irish Confederates. It ended with the beheading of King Charles I, the exile of Charles II, and the rise of Oliver Cromwell. And with war came great hardship, including food shortages, supply chain issues, the breakdown of church and government functions, and people accusing their neighbors of witchcraft.
Marion Gibson, professor at Exeter University and renowned author on the history of witchcraft and magic, traveled from the Scottish Lowlands to Essex, Suffolk, East Anglia, the Midlands, and northern England, following the witchcraft accusations and the trials during that tumultuous decade. Her travels provide Witchland readers with a sense of past and present, which old buildings and industries survived, how social and economic dynamics changed, how people lived in the 17th century and today. Gibson visited the shops and markets, the churches and graveyards. She walked the paths where convicted witches went from the prison to the gallows.
In Witchland, Gibson explains how the court functioned normally and how the wars changed that, from having less qualified men on the bench to towns hiring the self-styled Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne. (In part, the witch hunts slowed because towns realized the witchfinders were motivated by greed, not actual skills.)
The author explains the cruel methods of getting confessions, from sleep deprivation and constant movement (known as watching and walking) to using torture devices like thumb screws and leg crushers. One accused witch, Margaret Thomsone, stood on a stool intermittently for 26 days and nights. Not surprisingly, the mental and physical exhaustion caused some to confess to having imps, signing demonic pacts, or having sex with Satan. After confessing to being a witch, Margaret Wyard actually thanked her torturers. Vicar John Lowes confessed of his pride and boasted that his devilish powers caused him to sink a ship, causing 14 women to become widows. Before he was “turned off” the ladder, however, the vicar recited the Christian burial service to absolve himself.
From the remnants of records that exist, Gibson describes some of the accused, the charges, the confessions, the trials, and the verdicts, if known. In several towns, she discovered parish registers with a list of those “executed for witchcraft” who were buried in the churchyard.
Gibson says it is important to memorialize the witch hunts in Britain, not just to remember the victims but to recognize the causes—from economic uncertainties, corruption, and divisiveness to misogyny, culture wars, and politics—are lessons for us today.
Highly recommend.
Thanks to Scribner for the ARC.
Marion Gibson, professor at Exeter University and renowned author on the history of witchcraft and magic, traveled from the Scottish Lowlands to Essex, Suffolk, East Anglia, the Midlands, and northern England, following the witchcraft accusations and the trials during that tumultuous decade. Her travels provide Witchland readers with a sense of past and present, which old buildings and industries survived, how social and economic dynamics changed, how people lived in the 17th century and today. Gibson visited the shops and markets, the churches and graveyards. She walked the paths where convicted witches went from the prison to the gallows.
In Witchland, Gibson explains how the court functioned normally and how the wars changed that, from having less qualified men on the bench to towns hiring the self-styled Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne. (In part, the witch hunts slowed because towns realized the witchfinders were motivated by greed, not actual skills.)
The author explains the cruel methods of getting confessions, from sleep deprivation and constant movement (known as watching and walking) to using torture devices like thumb screws and leg crushers. One accused witch, Margaret Thomsone, stood on a stool intermittently for 26 days and nights. Not surprisingly, the mental and physical exhaustion caused some to confess to having imps, signing demonic pacts, or having sex with Satan. After confessing to being a witch, Margaret Wyard actually thanked her torturers. Vicar John Lowes confessed of his pride and boasted that his devilish powers caused him to sink a ship, causing 14 women to become widows. Before he was “turned off” the ladder, however, the vicar recited the Christian burial service to absolve himself.
From the remnants of records that exist, Gibson describes some of the accused, the charges, the confessions, the trials, and the verdicts, if known. In several towns, she discovered parish registers with a list of those “executed for witchcraft” who were buried in the churchyard.
Gibson says it is important to memorialize the witch hunts in Britain, not just to remember the victims but to recognize the causes—from economic uncertainties, corruption, and divisiveness to misogyny, culture wars, and politics—are lessons for us today.
Highly recommend.
Thanks to Scribner for the ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
"Witchland" was a really interesting look at the history and development of the witch trials in seventeenth-century Britain. Focusing on the victims and the historical causes for the witch panic, author Marion Gibson explores the changes in people's attitude towards 'charming' and calling people witches across the 1600s. It was interesting to see that in the earlier part of the century, you could get off more with a warning the first time you were found guilty of being a witch. As the century progressed, times grew harder thanks to the wars between the King's Cavaliers and the Parliamentarians, and communities were stressed in different ways, things changed. Then you started getting more accusations, the rise of the "witch finders" and the large (sometimes surprisingly large) trials.
Gibson does a good job talking about the victims and their experiences considering there is often not much to find in the records. Some of the information came s a real surprise to me: like the accused having to pay for their time in jail (or have their debts settled by others if they died), including paying the men who often tortured and killed them. For the most part the book is quite readable, though sometimes Gibson over-emphasises what the reader is supposed to be finding shocking or horrifying. Apparently she doesn't trust her readers to have the appropriate reactions on their own?
But this is the first book I've read that puts the witch panic in such good historical context and that was worth the annoying bits.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
Gibson does a good job talking about the victims and their experiences considering there is often not much to find in the records. Some of the information came s a real surprise to me: like the accused having to pay for their time in jail (or have their debts settled by others if they died), including paying the men who often tortured and killed them. For the most part the book is quite readable, though sometimes Gibson over-emphasises what the reader is supposed to be finding shocking or horrifying. Apparently she doesn't trust her readers to have the appropriate reactions on their own?
But this is the first book I've read that puts the witch panic in such good historical context and that was worth the annoying bits.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner for the eARC!
I really enjoyed (not sure if that’s the right word considering all the executions and whatnot but it will have to do) the author’s last book, so when I saw this was coming out, I was eager to get a chance to read it. I can say that I find the book quite interesting and easy to read. I also have a weird (or is it though?) fascination with the history of witch trials, so I’m always down to read a new book about the topic.
Although the book is heavy on historical details, it isn’t hard to follow and the writing is engaging. I learned plenty of new things about the witch trials in England. I also liked that the author focused on the victims more than the perpetrators. Most of us know the name Matthew Hopkins, but so few of us know the people who he helped kill. Also, not relevant and I hate to give him any more attention, but he wasn’t even thirty when he died and that threw me for a loop. Imagine roaming the country looking for witches, getting paid for said hunts, leading possibly hundreds (if not more) people to their death and being The Absolute Worst all before 30. Yikes.
Overall, an interesting, engaging book that was both fascinating and heart-breaking. I’d recommend this one for anyone interested in the history of witch trials, the way superstitious beliefs can spread, and what the life of those killed was like before their executions.
I really enjoyed (not sure if that’s the right word considering all the executions and whatnot but it will have to do) the author’s last book, so when I saw this was coming out, I was eager to get a chance to read it. I can say that I find the book quite interesting and easy to read. I also have a weird (or is it though?) fascination with the history of witch trials, so I’m always down to read a new book about the topic.
Although the book is heavy on historical details, it isn’t hard to follow and the writing is engaging. I learned plenty of new things about the witch trials in England. I also liked that the author focused on the victims more than the perpetrators. Most of us know the name Matthew Hopkins, but so few of us know the people who he helped kill. Also, not relevant and I hate to give him any more attention, but he wasn’t even thirty when he died and that threw me for a loop. Imagine roaming the country looking for witches, getting paid for said hunts, leading possibly hundreds (if not more) people to their death and being The Absolute Worst all before 30. Yikes.
Overall, an interesting, engaging book that was both fascinating and heart-breaking. I’d recommend this one for anyone interested in the history of witch trials, the way superstitious beliefs can spread, and what the life of those killed was like before their executions.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Witchland: A Deadly Moral Panic in Seventeenth Century Britain by Marion Gibson hops around England and Scotland, following the outcropping of witch trials that appeared over the years, mainly hewing between the 1640s-1650s with a few scattered references to witch trials from earlier and later periods.
Positive thought:
+I like that the author opened the book by dipping into the 17th century turmoil, specifically the Civil War, illustrating that the conflict and chaos supported the witch trials and helped to fuel them. The trials didn’t just spring up out of nowhere; they are evidence of a society that was pulling itself apart and looking for someone to blame for the destruction.
Negative thought:
-It is difficult to keep track of who has been accused of what and who was executed, especially in a chapter like the Framlingham Witches where the author lists a dozen names and then notes rapid fire who faced trial for certain and who may not have as they were at least once rejected for insufficient evidence. I understand why, it just makes it harder to recollect and stick a name with a deed, especially when many women share the same names.
This is an interesting book, and I’ll recommend it to people who want to know more about what was broadly occurring during the English Civil War years and how the fighting helped to contribute to the finding of witches.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Positive thought:
+I like that the author opened the book by dipping into the 17th century turmoil, specifically the Civil War, illustrating that the conflict and chaos supported the witch trials and helped to fuel them. The trials didn’t just spring up out of nowhere; they are evidence of a society that was pulling itself apart and looking for someone to blame for the destruction.
Negative thought:
-It is difficult to keep track of who has been accused of what and who was executed, especially in a chapter like the Framlingham Witches where the author lists a dozen names and then notes rapid fire who faced trial for certain and who may not have as they were at least once rejected for insufficient evidence. I understand why, it just makes it harder to recollect and stick a name with a deed, especially when many women share the same names.
This is an interesting book, and I’ll recommend it to people who want to know more about what was broadly occurring during the English Civil War years and how the fighting helped to contribute to the finding of witches.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
August 3, 2026
3.75/5
This was such a great non-fiction book about a little talked about subject. When you think of witch trials, you think of Salem - but that's not the only witch trials. And the British witch trials were much more intense and wide-spread. They did what we think they did in Salem.
I learned a lot in this book. And I especially appreciated how it related to today's world. I thought including that conversation was a really nice touch. Basically, people are afraid of change and like to blame women.
I could find some parts to be a bit meandering and repetitive, but the repetitiveness made sense. So that didn't bother me as much as the meandering.
Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!
This was such a great non-fiction book about a little talked about subject. When you think of witch trials, you think of Salem - but that's not the only witch trials. And the British witch trials were much more intense and wide-spread. They did what we think they did in Salem.
I learned a lot in this book. And I especially appreciated how it related to today's world. I thought including that conversation was a really nice touch. Basically, people are afraid of change and like to blame women.
I could find some parts to be a bit meandering and repetitive, but the repetitiveness made sense. So that didn't bother me as much as the meandering.
Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Welcome to Witchland, the engaging new book by Marion Gibson, which takes us on well researched tour of witchhunts in Scotland and England during the grim world of the 1600s. Poor? Widowed and indebted to the parish? Or rich and unpopular, or on the wrong side of current theology? You were mostly likely a witch, an inconvenient and wicked person who was strangled and burned in Scotland or hanged in England.
The author gives us the names of these women and men and the names of the so called witchfinders who tortured them and murdered them. Although the stories in the book describe a harsh and brutal time, they are engaging, highly readable, and thought provoking. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.
The author gives us the names of these women and men and the names of the so called witchfinders who tortured them and murdered them. Although the stories in the book describe a harsh and brutal time, they are engaging, highly readable, and thought provoking. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This was such an interesting book to read! It was really sad to learn about happened to these women during the English Civil War! It was so terrible how the ongoing war and economic difficulties caused such a divide in the country!
I liked that the book included lots of photos of different historical documents and photos where actual events occurred. The author obviously did a significant amount of research before writing this book and it shows! I liked that the historical information is included, but so is the emotion that it invokes!
The perfect Fall read for anyone interested in witchcraft and witch trials! Definitely fascinating!
I liked that the book included lots of photos of different historical documents and photos where actual events occurred. The author obviously did a significant amount of research before writing this book and it shows! I liked that the historical information is included, but so is the emotion that it invokes!
The perfect Fall read for anyone interested in witchcraft and witch trials! Definitely fascinating!
August 19, 2026
I loved this book so much! Like all of Gibson's work she found a way to make the past accessible, emotional and feel so connected to what is happening in the present. Each chapter and each 'witch' explored was done with so much respect, amazing use of evidence and gentle but fair assessment. I still think Witchcraft A history in 13 trials is my favorite ever book written about witches in history but this book Witchland has joined the ranks of one of my most favorite texts on the past and i recommend it to all!!
August 1, 2026
Interesting.
August 8, 2026
Informative and well researched
September 10, 2026
This gives an overview of witchcraft throughout time with specific cases. This one failed to keep my interest and was a just ok book for me.
Want to Read
September 17, 2026Thank you for choosing me to read and review this book. I look forward to receiving my copy.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews