1862 Rare Book - SALEM WITCHCRAFT - Wonders of the Invisible World by Cotton Mather.
(description)
Author: Cotton Mather & Increase Mather.
Title: The Wonders Of The Invisible World Being An Account Of The Tryals Of Several Witches Lately Executed In New England ~ by Cotton Mather D.D. To Which Is Added A Farther Account Of The Tryals Of The New England Witches ~ by Increase Mather D.D..
Publisher: London: John Russell Smith, 1862.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 8 " X 7 ".
Pages: xvi-291 pages.
Binding: Very good, near fine original publisher full-cloth binding (hinges fine, overall slightly scuffed - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight, and clean, light toning of pages - as shown, small bookseller stamp on the first endpaper - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the nice frontispiece portrait and the 3 original title page facsimiles.
Estimate : (USD 300 - USD 500)
The book: Rare edition of Wonders of the Invisible World -- The Wonders of the Invisible World was a book written by Cotton Mather and published in 1693. It was subtitled, Observations As well Historical as Theological, upon the Nature, the Number, and the Operations of the Devils. The book defended Mather's role in the witchhunt conducted in Salem, Massachusetts. It espoused the belief that witchcraft was an evil magical power. Mather saw witches as tools of the devil in Satan's battle to "overturn this poor plantation, the Puritan colony", and prosecution of witches as a way to secure God's blessings for the colony.
Its arguments are largely derivative of Saducismus Triumphatus by Joseph Glanvill. A copy of Glanvill's book was in Mather's library when he died.
Robert Calef published a refutation of Mather's book in 1700.
The authors:
Cotton Mather FRS (February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728) was a New England Puritan clergyman and a prolific writer. Educated at Harvard College, in 1685 he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House of Boston, where he continued to preach for the rest of his life. A major intellectual and public figure in English-speaking colonial America, Cotton Mather helped lead the successful revolt of 1689 against Sir Edmund Andros, the governor imposed on New England by King James II. Mather's subsequent involvement in the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693, which he defended in the book Wonders of the Invisible World (1693), attracted intense controversy in his own day and has negatively affected his historical reputation. As a historian of colonial New England, Mather is noted for his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702).
Increase Mather (June 21, 1639 Old Style – August 23, 1723 Old Style) was a New England Puritan clergyman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and president of Harvard College for twenty years (1681–1701). He was influential in the administration of the colony during a time that coincided with the notorious Salem witch trials.