Top 31 Books About Salem Witch Trials Updated 04 /2024

Books written about the Salem Witch Trials might be a good way to learn more about them.

Since the Salem Witch Trials began in 1692, many books have been written about them.

It doesn't matter that in October of 1692, Governor Phips ordered a ban on the publication of books about witchcraft and the Salem Witch Trials, because he feared that it would only spread the fires and make people more afraid.

There was no ban on Cotton Mather, a Boston minister who had been recommended for the job of Governor of Massachusetts Bay by his father, Phips.

First, Mather wrote "Wonders of the Invisible World," which came out in October of 1692. It was the first official book on the Salem Witch Trials when it came out that year.

The other ministers and people who were involved in the Salem Witch Trials also wrote their own books and memoirs on the subject before and after the ban.

Those books, as well as the court records, are the main sources on the trials and later become the main source material for modern books on the same subject. This is how it works:

In the 19th century, there was a resurgence of interest in history, which led to a second wave of books about the trials. In 1867, the former mayor of Salem, Charles W. Upham, wrote a book called Salem Witchcraft. It hasn't slowed down at all since then.

With so many books to choose from, it can be hard to figure out where to start. Many of the primary sources are very important, but because they are so old, they are a little out of date and the dense language makes it hard for modern readers to read.

The books that have been written since then, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, are much easier for people to read and understand. They also give a new, modern look at the trials.

With that in mind, I've put together a list of the best books about the Salem Witch Trials. The list has both nonfiction and fiction books on it. Amazon, Goodreads, and other sites like them all have good reviews for these books. They are some of the best-selling books on the subject and have good reviews.

In fact, I've used these books myself to research for this website, except for the fiction books. I can say that these are some of the best books about the trials that I've read.

The Salem Witch Trials: A Day by Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege by Marilynne K. Roach

This book was written in 2002 and talks about the Salem Witch Trials as they happened.

During the trials of 1692, each chapter covers a different month. The Salem Village girls first began to show signs of being afflicted in January of that year.

This book is great because the events and chronology of the trials can get a little confusing and complicated at times. This book helps you figure out what happened and when.

Roach has written a lot of books about the Salem Witch Trials. I think her other books are great, too, like Six Women of Salem: The Untold Story of the Accused and Their Accusers in the Salem Witch Trials and In the Days of the Salem Witchcraft Trials for kids.

When the Gallows Hill Project confirmed that Proctor's Ledge was the place where the witch trials took place in January of 2016, Roach was a part of that project.

A Storm of Witchcraft author Emerson W. Baker sent me an email after I wrote a blog post about Roach's book in February of 2016. In the email, Baker talked about how important Roach's book was to his research. "I am in awe of her work, and as I have told her – I never could have written my book without her day by day chronicle."

A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience by Emerson W. Baker

This book, which was written by Oxford Press in 2014, not only talks about the trials, but it also looks at the events that led up to and influenced the trials, like King Philip's war and the new Massachusetts Bay Colony charter that was issued in 1691.

In this way, it gives an overview of the colony in the 17th century and shows how the setting for the witch hysteria in 1692 came together over time.

All of the witch trials are covered in this book. Each chapter talks about a different part, like Salem's history and how it led to mass hysteria in 1692, the town politics of Salem Village, and the different groups of people who were involved in them. The last few chapters are about what happened after the trials, which is something that many books about the witch trials don't talk about very much.

Baker is a professor at Salem State University. He is also a member of the Gallows Hill Project, which confirmed the witch trials execution site in 2016. Baker was interviewed in a lot of the articles and TV shows about the find.

Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum

This book was written by Harvard University Press in 1974. It looks at the social setting and history of Salem before the witch trials to help people understand how and why they happened.

The book talks about things that happened in Salem before the trials, like factionalism, land disputes, family feuds, and church disputes.

They say that until this book came out, very few historians had looked into these issues. They say that the only one who had come close was Charles W. Upham in his 1867 book Salem Witchcraft. When they realized this, it made them want to write this book to help people better understand the trials.

University of Wisconsin history teacher Boyer died in 2012. He had a Phd from Harvard and worked at the university until his death in 2012. As a member of these groups, he was also a historian and a member of the American Antiquarian Society.

As a history teacher, Nissenbaum works at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He got a PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Death in Salem: The Private Lives Behind the 1692 Witch Hunt by Diane Foulds

This book, which was written in 2010, doesn't look at the big picture or the chronology of the events. Instead, it looks at the personal lives of the people who took part in the trials to make a kind of psychological profile of the colony at the time.

The book lists each person's name, age, where they live, and why they did what they did. It also talks about the personal circumstances that led each person to act the way they did.

This way, the chapters are broken down into groups based on what they did in the trials. These groups include people who were accusers and victims and people like clergy, judges, and elite people (the wealthy outsiders and government officials.)

Readers can really get a sense of what life was like for these people at the time and how their actions fit into the bigger picture. It adds a much-needed human touch to this very complicated subject.

Diane Foulds is from Vermont and has written for a lot of different publications, like the Boston Globe and Yankee Magazine Travel.

She does a great job of looking into the lives of the people who were in the trials and finding out about their personal stories, even though she isn't an expert in history.

A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials by Francis Hill

This book was written in 1995 and talks about the psychology and social issues that led to the Salem Witch Trials. The book thinks that the trials were mostly caused by things like fear, religion, and politics, but it doesn't say for sure.

The book says that the trials were caused by a repressed society acting out its worst fears and whacking those they thought were to blame for their problems.

It also talks about how the Salem Witch Trials and modern-day witch hunts like the communist scare in the 1950s and Islamophobia after September 11, 2001, have a lot in common with each other.

Francis Hill is a British author and journalist who has written a lot of books about the Salem Witch Trials, like The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Hunting for Witches, and Such Men Are Dangerous.

In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton

This book, which was written in 2002, says that the people of Salem were living in fear at the time. This fear set the stage for the mass hysteria and the witch trials.

Norton says that the people of Salem thought they were being attacked and that the Devil was to blame for their pain.

People in Salem at the time were having a lot of problems, from disease outbreaks to war to crop failures, and they thought witches and the devil were often to blame. People who read this book will be able to see these events as they happened in order to better understand what they were.

Norton is a professor of American History at Cornell University. He is also a history teacher. She has written many books about American history, including "Founding Mothers and Fathers." She has also been in many documentaries and history shows about the Salem Witch Trials, like "Witch Hunt" on the History Channel and "Salem Witch Hunt: Examine the Evidence" on the National Park Service.

The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials by Marion L. Starkey

When The Devil in Massachusetts was written in 1949, it used court records to tell the story of the Salem Witch Trials in a dramatic way. It took the dialogue from the records and used it to tell the story.

Psychologist Starkey also looks at the events in a new way to help people understand what they mean.

They say that The Devil in Massachusetts was one of the first well-researched and in-depth books about the Salem Witch Trials.

It was said in the preface of the book Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft that "despite its occasional imaginative embellishments [The Devil in Massachusetts] is still the best researched and certainly the most dramatic account of the events of 1692."

Francis Hill, the author of the book The Delusion of Satan, also said it was important, but said that because it was written so long ago, it's a little out of date.

Starkey, who died in 1991, worked as a newspaper editor before becoming an author. She also wrote a lot of history books, like The Visionary Girls: Witchcraft in Salem Village, Cherokee Nation and The First Plantation: A History of Hampton and Elizabeth City County, Virginia, from 1607 to 1887, which are both about history.

The Crucibleby Arthur Miller. The Crucible is a play that first premiered on Broadway in 1953.

Even though the play is set in Salem in 1692 and shows the events of the Salem Witch Trials, it is actually an allegory for the 1950s Red Scare in the United States.

As he was writing about the witch hunt in Salem, Miller made a comparison between it and the witch hunt for communists in the 1950s.

It's both a blessing and a curse for anyone who wants to learn more about the Salem Witch Trials. On the bright side, it started a new interest in the witch trials and helped start the tourism business in Salem.

Because the play is based on trials, many people think the play is true to history and that many of the things that happened in the play happened in real life.

Many myths and misunderstandings have come from this play and the movie that was made in 1996. Even though the play is close to being true to history, it isn't, and readers should remember that it is a fictionalized account of the trials.

Miller took a lot of liberties with the story, which he had the right to do as a playwright. He added his own ideas, theories, and events to the story, which he did.

Miller, for example, thought that Abigail Williams and John Proctor had an affair after reading the court documents about Elizabeth Proctor's trial. He made that idea the main plot of the play. If this is true, it doesn't seem very likely because of the age difference between Proctor and Williams. Miller thought this was true, so he used it in the story as a plot device.

After reading Charles W. Upham's book, Salem Witchcraft, Miller came up with the idea for The Crucible. The book was one of the first modern books on the subject and is said to be an important book in history on the subject.

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