Helen Steadman

Further reading on witches, witchfinders and witch trials

Thanks very much to everyone who came to City Library in Newcastle yesterday as part of the Books On Tyne literary festival to hear me read from my latest historical novel, Sunwise, which is the sequel to Widdershins (both books about the Newcastle witch trials). It was great to hear your questions and ideas about witch trials and they provided lots of food for thought – I’m only sorry we didn’t have longer for questions.

The osculum infame (kiss of shame) from Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum. Quote from Malleus Maleficarum by Jacob Sprenger & Heinrich Kramer

As promised, here is the list of references for further reading.

Witcherature (novels about witch trials)

Newcastle: Widdershins and Sunwise (Helen Steadman)

Derwent / Tyne Valley: The Ghosting of Anne Armstrong (Michael Cawood Green)

Pendle: The Familiars (Stacey Halls)

Aberdeen: The Mermaid and the Bear (Ailish Sinclair)

Essex: The Witchfinder’s Sister (Beth Underdown)

Salem: The Crucible (Arthur Miller)

Reading from Sunwise (Definition of Sunwise from Oxford English Dictionary)

Useful websites about witches, witch trials and witchfinders

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/early-modern-witch-trials/

https://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/w/witch/digital.html

https://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page

http://witches.shca.ed.ac.uk/

https://archive.org/

https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/

Non-fiction reference books about witches, witch trials and witchfinders

Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (Richard Golden, ed.)

Witchfinders: A Seventeenth Century English Tragedy (Malcolm Gaskill)

The Witch Hunts (Robert Thurston)

The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe (Brian P. Levack)

Witches, Midwives & Nurses (Barbara Ehrenreich & Deidre English)

Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England (James Sharpe)

Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in early Modern Europe (Stuart Clark)

Witchcraft in Europe and the New World, 1400–1800  (P. G. Maxwell Stuart)

The Witchcraft Reader (Darren Oldridge)

Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Andrew Sneddon)

Published by Helen Steadman

Helen Steadman is a historical novelist. Her best-selling first novel, Widdershins and its sequel, Sunwise were inspired by the Newcastle witch trials. Her third novel, The Running Wolf will be published by Impress Books on 12 September, 2020. Despite the Newcastle witch trials being the largest mass execution of witches on a single day in England, they are not widely known about. Helen is particularly interested in revealing hidden histories and she is a thorough researcher who goes to great lengths in pursuit of historical accuracy. To get under the skin of the cunning women in Widdershins and Sunwise, Helen trained in herbalism and learned how to identify, grow and harvest plants and then made herbal medicines from bark, seeds, flowers and berries. The Running Wolf is the story of a group of master swordmakers who left Solingen, Germany and moved to Shotley Bridge, England in 1687. As well as carrying out in-depth archive research and visiting forges in Solingen to bring her story to life, Helen also undertook blacksmith training, which culminated in making her own sword. Currently, Helen is completing a PhD in English at the University of Aberdeen and is working on her fourth novel, which is about the famous lighthouse-keeper’s daughter, Grace Darling. The Historical Novel Society said of Widdershins: “Impeccably written, full of herbal lore and the clash of ignorance and prejudice against common sense, as well as the abounding beauty of nature, it made for a great read. There are plenty of books, both fact and fiction, available about the witch-trial era, but not only did I not know about such trials in Newcastle, I have not read a novel that so painstakingly and vividly evokes both the fear and joy of living at that time.”

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