The Witching Hour

The WPHP Monthly Mercury

In last October's episode, “Of Monks and Mountains!!!” Kate and Kandice each read a gothic novel found in the WPHP, and it was so much fun that we simply had to do it again. For Season 2, Episode 5, “The Witching Hour”, we read books about witches — almost every book that mentions witches in the title in the WPHP, in fact! (There are only five.)

But within that small sample, we found a full spectrum of representations of witches and witchcraft, from the fantastical (and silly) woodland witches in Alethea Lewis’s The Nuns of the Desert (1805), to Joanna Baillie’s spine-tingling play, Witchcraft (1836), which is set against the backdrop of the Scottish witch hunt—and everything in between.

Join us for the fifth episode of Season 2, “The Witching Hour,” to learn more about why we only found five titles, what those titles told us about the role of witchcraft in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural imagination, and (most importantly) which title we awarded the coveted label of “bonkers.” But be warned—recording this episode gave Kate nightmares.
If you're interested in learning more about what we discussed in this episode, you can find resources and suggestions for further reading here: https://womensprinthistoryproject.com/blog/post/89