In 1604, 20-year-old Anne Gunter appeared to be bewitched: she suffered violent fits, fell into trances, and was said to be able to prophesy the future. The three women she accused as her tormentors were involved in a murderous feud with her father. This true tale of controlling fathers, wilful daughters, power relations between peasants and gentry, and village life in early-modern Europe opens a fascinating window into the past and reveals one young woman's experience with the phenomenon of witchcraft. Sharpe is professor of history at York University, UK. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

As Anne's case became ever more celebrated, Oxford dons and local notables weighed in with their opinions, providing us with an extraordinary record of her trials. Ultimately, Anne's case was appealed directly to King James I, a noted witch-hunter, and her examination in the king's imposing Star Chamber - with more than fifty witnesses - revealed all.".

In 1604, 20-year-old Anne Gunter was bewitched: she foamed at the mouth, contorted wildly in her bedchamber, went into trances. Her garters and bodices were perpetually unlacing themselves. Her signature symptom was to vomit pins and "she voided some pins downwards as well by her water or otherwise.." Popular history at its best, "The Bewitching of Anne Gunter" opens a fascinating window onto the past. It's a tale of controlling fathers, willful daughters, nosy neighbors, power relations between peasants and gentry, and village life in early-modern Europe. Above all it's an original and revealing story of one young woman's experience with the greatly misunderstood phenomenon of witchcraft. James Sharpe is Professor of History at York University and the author of "Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in" "Early Modern History" and other works of social history.

With the renewed interest in the history of witches and witchcraft, this timely book provides an introduction to this fascinating topic, informed by the main trends of new thinking on the subject. Beginning with a discussion of witchcraft in the early modern period, and charting the witch panics that took place at this time, the author goes on to look at the historical debate surrounding the causes of the legal persecution of witches. Contemporary views of witchcraft put forward by judges, theological writers and the medical profession are examined, as is the place of witchcraft in the popular imagination. Jim Sharpe also looks at the gender dimensions of the witch persecution, and the treatment of witchcraft in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Supported by a range of compelling documents, the book concludes with an exploration of why witch panics declined in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century.

The Trial of Tempel Anneke examines documents from an early modern European witchcraft trial with the pedagogical goal of allowing students to interact directly with primary sources. A brief historiographical essay has been added, along with eleven civic records, including regulations about sorcery, Tempel Anneke's marital agreement, and court salaries, which provide an even clearer picture of life in seventeenth-century Europe. Maps of Harxbüttel and the Holy Roman Empire and lists of key players enable easy reference.

"Shaman of Oberstdorf tells the fascinating story of a sixteenth-century mountain village caught in a panic of its own making. Four hundred years ago the Bavarian alpine town of Oberstdorf, surrounded by the towering peaks of the Vorarlberg, was awash in legends and rumors of prophets and healers, of spirits and specters, of witches and soothsayers. The book focuses on the life of a horse wrangler named Chonrad Stoeckhlin [1549-1587], whose extraordinary visions of the afterlife and enthusiastic practice of the occult eventually led to his death-and to the death of a number of village women-for crimes of witchcraft. Wolfgang Behringer is one of the premier historians of German witchcraft, not only because of his mastery of the subject at the regional level, but because he also writes movingly, forcefully, and with an eye for the telling anecdote."--Amazon.ca.

Guy Fawkes is amongst the most celebrated figures in English history and Bonfire Night is a remarkably long lived and very English tradition. But why is it that in a modern, multicultural society people still turn out every November to commemorate a planned act of treason and terrorism which was defeated four hundred years ago? Had the Gunpowder Plot succeeded and the Catholics managed to blow up the king, the royal family and Parliament, English history would have been shaped by a terrorist act of unprecedented proportions, shattering in terms of both the damage inflicted and its propaganda value. James Sharpe examines the fateful night of 5 November 1605 and the tangled web of religion and politics which gave rise to the plot. He uncovers how celebration of the event, and of Guy Fawkes, the one gunpowder plotter everyone remembers, has changed over the centuries. Today, although most of the religious connotations have long been ignored, the bonfires remain. The festival created in 1605 by the state and church to commemorate a failed act of Catholic terrorism, now provides an annual raison d'être for the firework industry and an annual source of concern for Britain's cat owners. Every year the crowds gather, the bonfires are lit and the firework displays dazzle again. Interestingly however, the tradition is fast changing and reverting to the pre-Gunpowder Plot festival (now much Americanised) of Halloween.