17th Century New England, with special emphasis on the Salem Witchcraft Trials

A 17th Century Colonial New England Bibliography

This is a sometimes-annotated bibliography of the books in my personal reference library as I research 17th century colonial New England. There are a lot about the Salem witch-hunt, Puritan thought, and Anglo-Indian contact, but also a few odds and ends that make sense to me to have on hand. Please note: I do not lend books. To anyone. Most of these titles can be borrowed from any good public or university library. If you want to purchase a copy of any of these titles, I have included direct links to Amazon.com for all but a handful of out-of-print or hard-to-find local imprint titles. To print out the whole bibliography, please use the printer-friendly version to save paper.

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Abbot | Axtell | Begiebing | Boyer | Breitwieser | Briggs | Carlson | Cronon | Demos | Earhart
Francis | Gildrie | Greven | Hall | Hill | Jackson | Kramer | Lockridge | Mather | Miller
Nevins | Powell | Robinson | Rowlandson | Sewall | Starkey | Thompson | VanDerBeets | Weisman | Winslow

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  1. Jackson, Shirley. The Witchcraft of Salem Village. Random House: New York. 1956. Order from Amazon.com

    Juvenile historical fiction by the author of the famous short story, "The Lottery." #69 in the Landmark Books Series.
  2. Kamensky, Jane. Governing the Tongue: The Poltics of Speech in Early New England. Oxford University Press: New York. 1997. Order from Amazon.com

  3. Karlsen, Carol F.. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. Random House: New York. 1987. Order from Amazon.com

    Karlsen's feminist demographic study discusses the typical features of "witches" across all of New England in the 17th century: female, married (or widowed), without sons or brothers (i.e., they are the heirs to their fathers' estates), over forty (past child-bearing age), and related to another accused witch (which accounts for almost all the males accused of witchcraft), and how these factors affected who was accused, charged, convicted, and ultimately executed. Salem was an exception not just because of the numbers of people involved, but because atypical people were being put through the legal system as "witches."
  4. Kluger, Marilyn. The Joy of Spinning: The first complete book on handspinning for the hobbyist and craftsman, from choosing a wheel to carding, spinning, and dyeing the handspun yarns with native plant dyes. Simon and Schuster: New York. 1971. Order from Amazon.com

  5. Knight, Janice. Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism. Harvard University Press: Camridge, MA. 1994. Order from Amazon.com

  6. Knoblock, Glenn A.. Historic Burial Grounds Of The New Hampshire Seacoast. Images of America series. Arcadia: Charleston, SC. 1999. Order from Amazon.com

  7. Koehler, Lyle. A Search for Power: The "Weaker Sex" in Seventeenth-Century New England. University of Illinois: Urbana, IL. 1980. Order from Amazon.com

Return to 17th c. Index Page.
This page was last updated Feb. 15, 2009 by Margo Burns, margoburns@gmail.com