Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft

The notion that witchcraft faded away with the onset of the scientific revolution is entirely mistaken. Sir Walter Scott wrote this volume for his son-in-law & biographer J. G. Lockhart. It stands in the grand tradition of writing on witchcraft & suggests that magic was alive & well in 19th-century Scotland, as contemporary newspaper reports confirm. Carefully researched, alive with stories drawn from his own & contemporaries' experience, & ranging in subject matter from ghosts & fairies to witches & astrologers, the Letters' inform, enliven, & entertain as they try to wed 19th-century skepticism with evidence which contradicts it. Letters has been a major source of reference ever since it was published.