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. Robinson, Enders A.. Salem Witchcraft and Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables. Heritage Books: Bowie, MD. 1992. Order from Amazon.com

    Extensive genealogical information about the families who participated in the Salem witchcraft trials.
  2. Robinson, Enders A.. The Devil Discovered: Salem Witchcraft 1692. Hippocrene: New York. 1991. Order from Amazon.com

    Robinson claims that the events in Salem were the direct result of a conspiracy set up by the Putnam family and Rev. Samuel Parris, based on the pattern of the familial allegiances of the afflicted and the people who filed the legal complaints -- which was used as a vehicle for the interests of the old guard Puritans, including Cotton Mather.
  3. Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, sexuality and religion in early modern Europe. Routledge: New York. 1994. Order from Amazon.com

  4. Rosenthal, Bernard. Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692. Camrbidge University Press: New York. 1993. Order from Amazon.com

    A marvelous close-reading of the extant primary texts, which hilites the inaccuracies of the myths that have emerged over the years about these events.
  5. Rosenthal, Bernard, ed.. Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. Cambridge University Press: New York. 2009. Order from Amazon.com

    New scholarly transcriptions of all the legal documents pertaining to the Salem witch trials, annotated and in chronological order.
  6. Round, Phillip H.. By Nature and by Custom Cursed: Transatlantic Civil Discourse and New England Cultural Production, 1620-1660 . Civil Society Series. University Press of New England: Hanover, NH. 1999. Order from Amazon.com

  7. Rowlandson, Mary. Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together With the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and Related Documents. Bedford Series in History and Culture. Bedford: Boston. 1997. Order from Amazon.com

    A different edition of Rowlandson's narrative. Related documents included are various excerpts, letters and sermons from 1675-1678 on the subject of the Indian war, plus an excerpt about Hannah Dustion's captivity from Cotton Mather's Decennium Luctousum, 1699.

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This page was last updated Feb. 15, 2009 by Margo Burns, margoburns@gmail.com