Davies, Owen – The Bell Bookshop

Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736-1951

Emma — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This classic study remains the definitive account of witchcraft and magic in the centuries following the witch trials.The Witchcraft Act of 1736 brought an end to witch trials in Britain. But just because the law had changed didn’t mean people had stopped believing. Fear of witches and faith in magic persisted, and people suspected of witchcraft continued to appear in court until the early twentieth century, though by then it was their persecutors who were being put on trial. In this book, Owen Davies traces the history of witches and magic in Britain from 1736 to 1951, when the Fraudulent Mediums Act finally erased the concept of witchcraft from the statute books. He reveals the grip that the supernatural continued to exert on the people of England and Wales in a period when the forces of progress were thought to have vanquished such beliefs.Exploring how the population coped with the threat of witches once there was no longer any legal redress, and how accusations of witchcraft took shape during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Davies provides a fascinating glimpse into a lingering world of supernatural belief.

Art of the grimoire

Emma — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A copiously illustrated global history of magic books, from ancient papyri to pulp paperbacks

Grimoires, textbooks of magic and occult knowledge, have existed through the ages alongside other magic and religious texts in part because of the need to create a physical record of magical phenomena, but also to enact magic through spells and rituals. To understand the history of these texts is to understand the influence of the major religions, the development of early science, the cultural influence of print, the growth of literacy, the social impact of colonialism, and the expansion of esoteric cultures across the oceans.

In more than two hundred color illustrations from ancient times to the present, renowned scholar Owen Davies examines little-studied artistic qualities of grimoires, revealing a unique world of design and imagination. The book takes a global approach, considering Egyptian and Greek papyri, ancient Chinese bamboo scripts, South American pulp prints, and Japanese demon encyclopedias, among other examples.

This book will enchant readers interested in the history of magic and science, as well as in book and manuscript history.