The Last Witchfinder

by James Morrow

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  Acknowledgments

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  THIS BOOK ABOUT BOOKS draws its historical framework and thematic tissue from dozens of volumes. Of particular value to my project were Masks of the Universe by Edward Harrison, Thinking with Demons by Stuart Clark, Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Krämer and James Sprenger, Withcraft in Europe: A Documentary History, edited by Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters, Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas, The European Witch-Craze by H. R. Trevor-Roper, A Trial of Witches by Gilbert Geis and Ivan Bunn, Les Sorcières: Fiancées de Satan by Jean-Michel Sallman, A Delusion of Satan by Frances Hill, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman by Carol F. Karlsen, Age of Enlightenment by Peter Gay, The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos, Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives, edited by Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, The First American: the Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by H. W. Brands, Franklin of Philadelphia by Esmond Wright, Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer by Michael White, A Portrait of Isaac Newton by Frank E. Manuel, Franklin and Newton by I. Bernard Cohen, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, and, last but not least, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Sir Isaac Newton.

  The Algonquin words and phrases in The Last Witchfinder are generally authentic. My characters normally speak the Narragansett dialect as recorded by Roger Williams in his remarkable linguistic treatise of 1643, A Key into the Language of America, the first of its kind published in the New World. Williams is better known as the founder of the settlement that became Rhode Island, an enterprise that consumed him following his expulsion from Massachusetts in 1635 for “new and dangerous ideas.”

  I would like to thank those friends, relatives, colleagues, and Benjamin Franklin impersonators who offered me their reactions to the novel as it evolved: Joe Adamson, Linda Barnes, Michael Bishop, Ginger Clark, Shira Daemon, Margaret Duda, David Edwards, Gordon Fleming, Merrilee Heifetz, Nalo Hopkinson, Philip Jenkins, Michael Kandel, Kirk McElhearn, Bill Meikle, Carolyn Meredith, Gregory Miller, Christopher Morrow, William Pencak, Alis Rasmussen, Elisabeth Rose, Bill Sheehan, James D. Smith, James Stevens-Arce, and Michael Vicario.

  My gratitude also goes to my wife, Kathryn Morrow, for her endless emotional and intellectual inspiration; to my agent, Wendy Weil, for so skillfully navigating the shoals of contemporary publishing; to my editor, Jennifer Brehl, for befriending a formidable manuscript; to my neighbor Londa Schiebinger, for her insight into the Royal Society’s female skeleton; and to my cousin Glenn Morrow, for offering me many fruitful challenges and supplementing my research with dozens of compelling facts.

  JAMES MORROW is the author of eight previous novels. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania, where he has spent the past seven years working on this book.

  www.jamesmorrow.net