Walter Scott

Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft Walter Scott

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 ÔLetters' 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.