DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Discovery of Witches" by Matthew Hopkins. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
By spring 1645, two years of civil war had exacted a dreadful toll upon England. People lived in terror as disease and poverty spread, and the nation grew ever more politically divided. In a remote corner of Essex, two obscure gentlemen, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne, exploited the anxiety and lawlessness of the time and initiated a brutal campaign to drive out the presumed evil in their midst. Touring Suffolk and East Anglia on horseback, they detected demons and idolators everywhere. Through torture, they extracted from terrified prisoners confessions of consorting with Satan and demonic spirits. Acclaimed historian Malcolm Gaskill retells the chilling story of the most savage witch-hunt in English history. By the autumn of 1647 at least 250 people--mostly women--had been captured, interrogated, and hauled before the courts. More than a hundred were hanged, causing Hopkins to be dubbed "Witchfinder General" by critics and admirers alike. Though their campaign was never legally sanctioned, they garnered the popular support of local gentry, clergy, and villagers. While Witchfinders tells of a unique and tragic historical moment fueled by religious fervor, today it serves as a reminder of the power of fear and fanaticism to fuel ordinary people's willingness to demonize others.
Secret, strange, dark, impure and dissonant...Enter the haunted landscapes of folk horror, a world of pagan village conspiracies, witch finders, and teenagers awakening to evil; of dark fairy tales, backwoods cults and obsolete technologies. Beginning with the classics Night of the Demon, Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan's Claw, We Don't Go Back surveys the genre of screen folk horror from across the world. Travelling from Watership Down to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with every stop inbetween, We Don't Go Back is a thoughtful, funny and essential overview of folk horror in TV and cinema."A beautiful rumination on the dark films and television that shaped me and a generation of odd children, for good or ill, worth a year of your time, because you won't just read the book, you'll feel a burning desire to watch everything mentioned within." - Robin Ince"A comprehensive, accessible and often riotously funny tome weaving together folk horror in all its forms, from British television to the American backwoods, from Eastern European fairytales to the vengeful ghosts of East Asia. Ingham explores uncanny landscapes haunted by things buried, old cultures converging with the reluctance of contemporary reason, that very tension that gives his book its name. He attempts to both define folk horror and free it from definition, creating the ultimate guide to the genre's manifestations on film and offering a convincing argument as to why the genre resonates so compellingly with people today." - Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women
Matthew Hopkins is perhaps the most notorious, certainly the most productive, witchfinder that England ever boasted. In eighteen months between 1645 and 1646, he was responsible for the condemnation and execution of at least 230 witches in south-east England and East Anglia. His victims were for the most part elderly women, though men too, even respected clergymen, faced trial and capital punishment for performing witchcraft and making covenants with Satan. Hopkins had appointed himself Witchfinder General by order of Parliament but his reputation as a local hero became tarnished by his use of excessive torture, too many false accusations, and confessions obtained by dubious means. His death is somewhat mysterious. He died while still quite young, possibly after having been accused of witchcraft himself and executed. Craig Cabell, already a noted biographer of such contemporary students of the occult as Dennis Wheatley and James Herbert, uses the copious extant records and Hopkins's own writings, to create a richly detailed picture of a man and a society obsessed with magic, devil worship and the powers of darkness. He provides the first full modern biography of a man who turned his undoubted energies and gifts into a streamlined, and profitable, killing machine.
'The number of women my brother Matthew killed, so far as I can reckon it, is one hundred and six...' THE PAGE-TURNING RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB BESTSELLER 'A compelling debut from a gifted storyteller' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent When Alice Hopkins' husband dies in a tragic accident, she returns to the small Essex town of Manningtree, where her brother Matthew still lives. But home is no longer a place of safety. Matthew has changed, and there are rumours spreading through the town: whispers of witchcraft, and of a great book, in which he is gathering women's names. To what lengths will Matthew's obsession drive him? And what choice will Alice make, when she finds herself at the very heart of his plan? Winner of the HWA Debut Crown Award 2017, and a Spring 2018 Richard and Judy Book Club pick, this beautiful and haunting historical thriller is perfect for fans of Sarah Waters, The Miniaturist and Burial Rites. 'Vivid and terrifying' Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train 'Thumpingly good' Lucy Mangan 'A clever, pacey read that blends truth and fiction...what elevates this book above other historical thrillers are the questions that Underdown asks about the nature of power, fear and how easy it is to become complicit in terrible acts' The Times 'A chilling, creeping novel with very obvious parallels to more modern forms of witch-hints and misogyny, but is still firmly rooted in an England torn apart by civil war and gripped by religious fervour' Red 'A haunting, brooding debut' Psychologies 'At once a feminist parable and an old-fashioned, check-twice-under-the-bed thriller' Patrick Gale 'A richly told and utterly compelling tale, with shades of Hilary Mantel' Kate Hamer, author of The Girl in the Red Coat 'Anyone who liked Cecilia Ekback's Wolf Winter is going to love this' Natasha Pulley, author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street 'Beth Underdown grips us from the outset and won't let go...at once a feminist parable and an old-fashioned, check-twice-under-the-bed thriller' Patrick Gale, author of Notes from an Exhibition 'A tense, surprising and elegantly-crafted novel' Ian McGuire, author of The North Water 'Beth Underdown cleverly creates a compelling atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia... Even from the distance of nearly four hundred years, her Matthew Hopkins is a genuinely frightening monster' Kate Riordan 'Superb: dark, terrifying and utterly compelling' Tracy Borman 'A novel for our times. Beth Underdown's The Witchfinder's Sister explores another time and another place to lay bare the visceral horror of what a witch hunt truly is' New York Times Book Review 'Entertaining and thought-provoking, with a valuable message for our own times' Washington Post
Wolf Hall meets The Favourite in this beguiling debut novel that brilliantly brings to life the residents of a small English town in the grip of the seventeenth-century witch trials and the young woman tasked with saving them all from themselves. "This is an intimate portrait of a clever if unworldly heroine who slides from amused observation of the 'moribund carnival atmosphere' in the household of a 'possessed' child to nervous uncertainty about the part in the proceedings played by her adored tutor to utter despair as a wagon carts her off to prison." —Alida Becker, The New York Times Book Review England, 1643. Puritanical fervor has gripped the nation. And in Manningtree, a town depleted of men since the wars began, the hot terror of damnation burns in the hearts of women left to their own devices. Rebecca West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only occasionally by her infatuation with the handsome young clerk John Edes. But then a newcomer, who identifies himself as the Witchfinder General, arrives. A mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about what the women on the margins of this diminished community are up to. Dangerous rumors of covens, pacts, and bodily wants have begun to hang over women like Rebecca—and the future is as frightening as it is thrilling. Brimming with contemporary energy and resonance, The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust, and betrayal run amok as a nation's arrogant male institutions start to realize that the very people they've suppressed for so long may be about to rise up and claim their freedom.
A meditation on death and mortality, “The Conqueror Worm” describes a cryptic and ghoulish play that represents the inevitability of death. Despite the fact that his first published works were books of poetry, during his lifetime Edgar Allan Poe was recognized more for his literary criticism and prose than his poetry. However, Poe’s poetic works have since become as well-known as his famous stories, and reflect similar themes of mystery and the macabre. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
Interest in the ancient, the occult, and the "wyrd" is on the rise. The furrows of Robin Hardy (The Wicker Man), Piers Haggard (Blood on Satan's Claw), and Michael Reeves (Witchfinder General) have arisen again, most notably in the films of Ben Wheatley (Kill List), as has the Spirit of Dark of Lonely Water, Juganets, cursed Saxon crowns, spaceships hidden under ancient barrows, owls and flowers, time-warping stone circles, wicker men, the goat of Mendes, and malicious stone tapes. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful And Things Strange charts the summoning of these esoteric arts within the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, using theories of psychogeography, hauntology, and topography to delve into the genre's output in film, television, and multimedia as its "sacred demon of ungovernableness" rises yet again in the twenty-first century.
