Something Wicked: The Lives, Crimes and Deaths of the Pendle Witches
by Carol Ann Lee
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Pub Date 10 Oct 2024 | Archive Date 31 Oct 2024
Bonnier Books UK | John Blake
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Description
On 20 August 1612, ten people from Pendle were executed before a vast crowd at Lancaster's Gallows Hill. The condemned and their associates had endured six months of accusations, imprisonment and torture; their treatment was such that one of the group died in Lancaster Castle's dungeons, while awaiting trial.
Today, a thriving tourism industry exists in and around Pendle, the former home of the so-called witches, yet virtually everything we know about the case originates from a single source: Thomas Potts' Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches, hurriedly published in 1613 and distinctly skewed in favour of the prosecution. Until now...
Sunday Times bestselling author Carol Ann Lee brings an entirely fresh perspective to the story by approaching it as true crime. Having worked in the genre for more than a decade, her research leads to revelatory discoveries, transforming our knowledge of those shadowy figures behind ill-famed names, and the terrible events that befell them.
After four centuries of superstition and surmise, the two central, warring families - each headed by a fiercely independent widow working as 'cunning women' - emerge fully formed, as the book uncovers the reality of their lives and their alleged crimes before exploring the trial and executions.
Along the way, we uncover the truth behind some of the story's most enduring mysteries: the legend of Malkin Tower and the final resting place of the Pendle witches.
This is a ground-breaking book that will take the reader on a spellbinding journey into the dark heart of England's largest and most notorious witch trial.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781789465839 |
| PRICE | £20.00 (GBP) |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Educator 388984
This was very good. I had never heard of the author before but Carol Ann Lee does a great job at examining records, presenting the evidence, trying to give a bit of flesh to people who have left no records themselves. I thought I knew roughly what happened during the Pendle witch trials, but it was actually a lot more complicated than I expected, partly because a lot of the characters have the same first names (mothers and daughters often do), the same last names without being exactly related, and because there's a lot going on, with characters all linked through various ways - so and so's daughter's goddaughter was the neighbour of so and so, who accused the former's sister in law, etc. It can be hard to follow at times, but Carol Ann Lee also did an excellent job at giving a context I didn't have - I read a few other books on witchcraft the past couple of years so I knew what books had been published back then and what the legal system said, but she also goes at length about the religious context and the persecution of Catholics. There's a chapter about the White Pater Noster that the Device family used as a "charm" and its regional variations, and the suspicion that fell on anyone who may be a papist, with your neighbours watching you and using it against you. She's also very detailed when it comes to the abject poverty that people experienced. Overall I think I had come to think of witchcraft solely or mostly as a feminist theme, and she made it about this and about economic inequalities and religious persecution.
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