Further reading
Some of the topics covered in the exhibition have been discussed extensively in scholarly literature. The reading lists below suggest starting points; they are not exhaustive.
Candle wax, kale, the elements (as used in divination) and the sieve and shears are not included below because they are not sufficiently large topics to have dedicated literatures. See instead works on divination broadly, listed under ‘General’ and ‘Diviners and clients’. On nature, see entries under ‘Animals’ and ‘Weather’, as well as general works.
- Ovanes Akopyan (ed.), Fate and Fortune in European Thought, ca. 1400–1650 (Leiden, 2021)
- Edward Bever, The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke, 2008), ch. 6
- Andrea Brady and Emily Butterworth (eds), The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe (New York, 2010)
- Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750 (Oxford, 2010)
- Albrecht Classen (ed.), Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time: The Occult in Pre-Modern Sciences, Medicine, Literature, Religion, and Astrology (Berlin, 2017)
- Jason P. Coy, The Devil’s Art: Divination and Discipline in Early Modern Germany (Charlottesville, 2020)
- Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750 (New York, 1998)
- Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History (London, 2003)
- Johannes Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America: A History (Basingstoke, 2011)
- William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, 1994)
- Joanne Edge, Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain: Questioning Life, Predicting Death (Woodbridge, 2024)
- Kathryn A. Edwards (ed.), Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe (Farnham, 2015)
- Jeremy Harte, ‘Superstitious Observations: Fortune-telling in English Folk Culture’, Time and Mind 11:1 (2018), 67-88
- Matthias Heiduk , Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner (eds), Prognostication in the Medieval World: A Handbook (Berlin, 2021)
- Sarah Iles Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination (Oxford, 2008)
- J. Kiliańczyk-Zięba, ‘In Search of Lost Fortuna: Reconstructing the Publishing History of the Polish Book of Fortune-Telling’, in Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree (eds), Lost Books: Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe, (Leiden, 2016), pp. 120-43
- Brian P. Levack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (Oxford, 2013)
- Ulrike Ludwig, ‘Prognostication in Early Modern Times – Outlook’ in Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner (eds), Prognostication in the Medieval World: A Handbook (Berlin, 2021), pp. 243-65
- Paul Kléber Monod, Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven, 2013)
- Jennifer Mori, ‘Magic and Fate in Eighteenth-Century London: Prosecutions for Fortune-Telling, c. 1678–1830’, Folklore 129:3 (2018), 254-77
- Darren Oldridge, Strange Histories: The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and Other Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds, 2nd edn (London, 2018)
- Tabitha Stanmore, Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service Magic in England from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 2023)
- Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971)
- Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999)
- Georgie Blears, ‘Experiencing the Invisible Polity: Trance in Early Modern Scotland’, in Julian Goodare and Martha McGill (eds), The Supernatural in Early Modern Scotland (Manchester, 2020), pp. 55-71
- David Cressy, ‘Trouble with Gypsies in Early Modern England’, The Historical Journal 59:1 (2016), 45-70
- Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History (London, 2003)
- Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford, 2005)
- Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright, The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England (Pennsylvania, 2021)
- Sanne de Laat and Dan Harms, ‘“It’s a Kind of Magic”: Juggling Privacy and Prosecution for Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Magical Practitioners’, KNOW 7:1 (2023), 113-35
- Peter Marshall, The Mercurial Emperor: The Magic Circle of Rudolf II in Renaissance Prague (London, 2007 [2006])
- Alec Ryrie, The Sorcerer’s Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England (Oxford, 2008)
- Tabitha Stanmore, Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic (London, 2024)
- Tabitha Stanmore, Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service Magic in England from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 2023)
- Frances Timbers, ‘The Damned Fraternitie’: Constructing Gypsy Identity in Early Modern England, 1500–1700 (London, 2016)
- Frances Timbers, The Magical Adventures of Mary Parish: The Occult World of Seventeenth-Century London (Kirksville, 2016)
- Frances Timbers, ‘Mary Squires: A Case Study in Constructing Gypsy Identity in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Kim Kippen and Lori Woods (eds), Worth and Repute: Valuing Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Toronto, 2011), pp. 153-78
- Alan W. Bates, ‘Good, Common, Regular, and Orderly: Early Modern Classifications of Monstrous Births’, Social History of Medicine 18:2 (2005), 141-58
- William E. Burns, An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics, and Providence in England, 1657–1727 (Manchester, 2002)
- Julie Crawford, Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-Reformation England (Baltimore, 2005)
- David Cressy, ‘Lamentable, Strange, and Wonderful: Headless Monsters in the English Revolution’, in Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes (eds), Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities: In Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, 2004), pp. 40-66
- Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 (New York, 1998)
- Surekha Davies, ‘The Unlucky, the Bad and the Ugly: Categories of Monstrosity from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment’, in Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (Farnham, 2013), pp. 49-76
- Jerome Friedman, Miracles and the Pulp Press in the English Revolution: The Battle of Frogs and Fairford’s Flies (London, 1993)
- Helen Frisby, (2015) ‘“Them Owls Know”: Portending Death in Later Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century England’, Folklore 126:2 (2015), 196-214
- Harriet Lyon, ‘The Fisherton Monster: Science, Providence, and Politics in Early Restoration England’, Historical Journal 60:2 (2017), 333-62
- Paweł Rutkowski, ‘Starlings, Whales and Herrings: Animals as Portents in Early Modern England’, Studia Historyczne 61:1 (2018), 45-58
- Peter T. Struck, ‘Animals and Divination’, in Gordon Lindsay Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life (Oxford, 2014), pp. 310-23
- Dudley Wilson, Signs and Portents: Monstrous Births from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (London, 1993)
- Monica Azzolini, ‘Are the Stars Aligned? Matchmaking and Astrology in Early Modern Italy’, Isis 112:4 (2021), 766-75
- Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Cambridge [Mass.], 2013)
- Steven Vanden Broecke, Astrology in the Early Modern Period: Practices and Concepts, in D. Jalobeanu and C. T. Wolfe (eds), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (Cham, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_582-1
- Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1500–1800 (London, 1979)
- Alison A. Chapman, ‘Marking Time: Astrology, Almanacs, and English Protestantism’, Renaissance Quarterly 60:4 (2007), 1257-90
- Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1989)
- Louise Hill Curth, English Almanacs, Astrology and Popular Medicine: 1550-1700 (Manchester, 2007)
- Wiebke Deimann and David Juste (eds), Astrologers and their Clients in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cologne, 2015)
- Brendan Dooley (ed.), A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance (Leiden, 2014)
- Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars (Manchester, 1995)
- Michael Hunter and Annabel Gregory (eds), An Astrological Diary of the Seventeenth Century: Samuel Jeake of Rye 1652-1699 (Oxford, 1988)
- Phebe Jensen, Astrology, Almanacs, and the Early Modern English Calendar (London, 2021)
- Lauren Kassell, ‘Casebooks in Early Modern England: Medicine, Astrology, and Written Records’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 88:4 (2014), 595-625
- William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (eds), Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge [Mass.], 2001)
- Michelle Pfeffer, ‘Astrology, Plague, and Prognostication in Early Modern England: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Public Health’, Past & Present 20 (2023)
- Luís Campos Ribeiro, Jesuit Astrology: Prognostication and Science in Early Modern Culture (Leiden, 2023)
- Jane Ridder-Patrick, ‘Astrology and Supernatural Power in Early Modern Scotland’, in Julian Goodare and Martha McGill (eds), The Supernatural in Early Modern Scotland (Manchester, 2020)
- David Cressy, ‘Books as Totems in Seventeenth-Century England and New England’, The Journal of Library History 2:1 (1986), 92-10
- Spencer J. Weinreich, ‘Hagiography by the Book: Bibliomancy and Early Modern Cultures of Compilation in Francisco Zumel’s De vitis patrum (1588)’, Journal of the History of Ideas 80:1 (2019), 1-23
- Charles Burnett, ‘The Scapulimancy of Giorgio Anseimi’s Divinum opus de magia disciplina’, Euphrosyne 23 (1995), 63-81
- Stefano Rapisarda, ‘The Shoulder-Bone as a Mantic Object’, in Matthias Heiduk, Klaus Herbers and Hans-Christian Lehner, Prognostication in the Medieval World: A Handbook (Berlin, 2021), pp. 971-7
- Kristen J. Burke, ‘Print and the Early Modern Playing Card’, Oxford Art Journal 44:2 (2021), 183-205
- Jessica Carter, ‘Sleep and Dreams in Early Modern England’ (Imperial College London PhD thesis, 2008)
- László Sándor Chardonnens, ‘Dream Divination in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books: Patterns of Transmission’, in M. Cesario & H. Magennis (eds), Aspects of Knowledge: Preserving and Reinventing Traditions of Learning in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 2018), pp. 23-52
- Sasha Handley, Sleep in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016)
- Ann Marie Plane, Leslie Tuttle and Anthony F. C. Wallace (eds), Dreams, Dreamers, and Visions: The Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)
- Janine Rivière, Dreams in Early Modern England: ‘Visions of the Night’ (London, 2017)
- Alec Ryrie, ‘Sleeping, Waking and Dreaming in Protestant Piety’, in Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie (eds), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain (London, 2017), pp. 73-92
- Jessen Kelly, ‘Predictive Play: Wheels of Fortune in the Early Modern Lottery Book’, in Allison Levy (ed.), Playthings in Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games (Kalamazoo, 2017), pp. 145-66
- AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn (eds), My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and Its Practitioners in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2018)
- Michael Witmore, ‘Shakespeare and Wisdom Literature’, in David Loewenstein and Michael Witmore (eds), Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 191-213
- Brian Copenhaver, ‘A Show of Hands’, in Claire Richter Sherman (ed.), Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Washington, 2000), pp. 46-59, 210-213, 222-8
- Michael R. Lynn, ‘The Curious Science: Chiromancy in Early Modern France’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 13:3 (2018), 447-80
- Frances Timbers, ‘The Damned Fraternitie’: Constructing Gypsy Identity in Early Modern England, 1500–1700 (London, 2016), ch. 6
- Paweł Rutkowski, ‘Through the Body: Chiromancy in 17th-Century England’, World and Word 32:1 (2019), 33-44
- Naomi Baker, Plain Ugly: The Unattractive Body in Early Modern Culture (Manchester, 2010)
- Mark S. Dawson, ‘Astrology and Human Variation in Early Modern England’, The Historical Journal 56:1 (2013), 31-53
- Mark Dawson, Bodies Complexioned: Human Variation and Racism in Early Modern English Culture, c. 1600-1750 (Manchester, 2019)
- Folke Gernet, Divination on Stage: Prophetic Body Signs in Early Modern Theatre in Spain and Europe (Berlin, 2021)
- Lucy Hartley, Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge, 2005)
- Stephanie A. Leitch, Early Modern Print Media and the Art of Observation: Training the Literate Eye (Cambridge, 2024), ch. 3
- Melissa Percival, The Appearance of Character: Physiognomy and Facial Expression in Eighteenth-Century France (London, 1999)
- Martin Porter, Windows of the Soul: Physiognomy in European Culture 1470-1780 (Oxford, 2005)
- Frances Timbers, ‘The Damned Fraternitie’: Constructing Gypsy Identity in Early Modern England, 1500–1700 (London, 2016), ch. 6
- Lauren Kassell and Robert Ralley, ‘Prayer and Physic in Seventeenth-Century England’, Early Science and Medicine 26 (2021), 480-50
- Sophie Mann, ‘“A Double Care”: Prayer as Therapy in Early Modern England’, Social History of Medicine 33:4 (2020), 1055-76
- Martha McGill, ‘Seeking the Lord, Seeking a Husband: Navigating Marginality in the Diary of Rachel Brown (1736-38)’, in Allan Kennedy and Susanne Weston (ed.), Life at the Margins in Early Modern Scotland (Woodbridge, 2024), pp. 179-93
- Alex Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford, 2013), pt. 2
- Joseph William Sterrett (ed.), Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature: Gesture, Word and Devotion (Cambridge, 2018)
- Raisa Maria Toivo, ‘Prayer and the Body in Lay Religious Experience in Early Modern Finland’, in Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Raisa Maria Toivo (eds), Histories of Experience in the World of Lived Religion (Cham, 2022), 115-38
- Andrew Crome (ed.), Prophecy and Eschatology in the Transatlantic World, 1550-1800 (London, 2016)
- Anna French, Children of Wrath: Possession, Prophecy and the Young in Early Modern England (Farnham, 2015)
- Elaine Hobby, ‘Prophecy’, In Anita Pacheco, A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, (Hoboken, 2002), pp. 264-81
- Warren Johnston, ‘Prophecy, Patriarchy, and Violence in the Early Modern Household: The Revelations of Anne Wentworth’, Journal of Family History 34:4 (2009), 344-69
- Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley, 1992)
- Tim Thornton, Prophecy, Politics and the People in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2006)
- Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999)
- Benjamin Wardhaugh, Poor Robin’s Prophesies: A Curious Almanac, and the Everyday Mathematics of Georgian England (Oxford, 2012)
- Diane Watt, ‘Reconstructing the Word: The Political Prophecies of Elizabeth Barton (1506-1534)’, Renaissance Quarterly 50 (1997), 136-163
- Diane Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 1997)
- Silke Ackermann and Louise Devoy, ‘“The Lord of the smoking mirror”: Objects Associated with John Dee in the British Museum’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 43:3 (2012), 539-49
- Stephen Clucas, ‘False Illuding Spirits & Cownterfeiting Deuills: John Dee’s Angelic
Conversations and Religious Anxiety’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), Conversations with Angels: Essays Towards a History of Spiritual Communication, 1100-1700 (London, 2011), pp. 150-74 - Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge, 1999)
- Sanne de Laat and Dan Harms, ‘“It’s a Kind of Magic”: Juggling Privacy and Prosecution for Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Magical Practitioners’, KNOW 7:1 (2023), 113-35
- Frances Timbers, Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era (London, 2014), ch. 4
- Jill Bolin, ‘The Discovery of the Future: Prophecy and Second Sight in Scottish History’ (University of California PhD thesis, 2020)
- Edward J. Cowan, ‘The Discovery of the Future: Prophecy and Second Sight in Scottish History’, in Lizanne Henderson (ed.), Fantastical Imaginations: The Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture (Edinburgh, 2009), 1-28
- Michael Hunter, The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment (New Haven, 2020), ch. 6
- Michael Hunter, introduction to idem (ed.), The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science, and Second Sight in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge, 2001)
- Elsa Richardson, Second Sight in the Nineteenth Century: Prophecy, Imagination and Nationhood (London, 2017)
- Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart, ‘The Invention of Highland Second Sight’, in Julian Goodare and Martha McGill (eds), The Supernatural in Early Modern Scotland (Manchester, 2020), pp. 178-203
- Jonathan Barry, Raising Spirits: How a Conjuror’s Tale Was Transmitted across the Enlightenment (Basingstoke, 2013)
- Euan Cameron, “Angels, Demons and Everything in Between: Spiritual Beings in Early Modern Europe,” in Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen (eds), Angels of Light? Sanctity and the Discernment of Spirits in the Early Modern Period (Leiden, 2013), pp. 17-52
- Stephen Clucas, ‘False Illuding Spirits & Cownterfeiting Deuills: John Dee’s Angelic
Conversations and Religious Anxiety’, in Joad Raymond (ed.), Conversations with Angels: Essays Towards a History of Spiritual Communication, 1100-1700 (London, 2011), pp. 150-74 - Owen Davies, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (New York, 2007)
- Julian Goodare, ‘Emotional Relationships with Spirit-Guides in Early Modern Scotland’, in Julian Goodare and Martha McGill (eds), The Supernatural in Early Modern Scotland (Manchester, 2020), pp. 39-54
- Sasha Handley, Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 2007)
- Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge, 1999)
- Lizanne Henderson and Edward J. Cowan, Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (East Linton, 2001)
- Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (New Haven, 2017)
- Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham (eds), Angels in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2006)
- Peter Marshall, Invisible Worlds: Death, Religion and the Supernatural in England, 1500–1700 (London, 2017)
- Antoine Mazurek, “The Guardian Angel: From the Natural to the Supernatural,” in Kathryn A. Edwards (ed.), Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe (Farnham, 2015), pp. 51-69
- Martha McGill, ‘Angels in Early Modern Scotland’, in Julian Goodare and Martha McGill (eds), The Supernatural in Early Modern Scotland (Manchester, 2020), pp. 86-106
- Martha McGill, Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland (Woodbridge, 2018)
- Charlotte-Rose Millar, Witchcraft, the Devil and Emotions in Early Modern England (London, 2017)
- Charlotte Millar, ‘The Witch’s Familiar in Sixteenth-Century England’, Melbourne Historical Journal 38 (2010), 119–36
- Darren Oldridge, The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England
- (London, 2016)
- Laura Sangha, Angels and Belief in England, 1480-1700 (London, 2012)
- James A. Serpell, ‘Guardian Spirits or Demonic Pets: The Concept of the Witch’s Familiar in Early Modern England, 1530–1712’, in Angela N. H. Creager and William Chester Jordan (eds), The Human/Animal Boundary (Rochester, 2002), pp. 157-90
- James Sharpe, ‘The Witch’s Familiar in Elizabethan England’, in G. W. Bernard and S. J. Gunn (eds), Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays Presented to C. S. L. Davies (Farnham, 2002), pp. 219-32
- Louise Yeoman, ‘“Away with the Fairies”’, in Lizanne Henderson (ed.), Fantastical Imaginations: The Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture (Edinburgh, 2009), pp. 29–46
- Alexandra Walsham, ‘Invisible Helpers: Angelic Intervention in Post-Reformation England’, Past & Present 208 (2010), 77-130
- Greg Warburton, ‘Gender, Supernatural Power, Agency and the Metamorphoses of the Familiar in Early Modern Pamphlet Accounts of English Witchcraft’, Parergon 20 (2003), 95-118
- Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (Brighton, 2005)
- Emma Wilby, ‘The Witch’s Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland’, Folklore 111:2 (2000), 283-305
- Simon Young and Ceri Houlbrook (eds), Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies: 500 AD to the Present (London, 2018)
- William E. Burns, ‘“The Terriblest Eclipse That Hath Been Seen in Our Days”: Black Monday and the Debate on Astrology during the Interregnum’, in Margaret J. Osler (ed.), Rethinking the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 137-52
- Sophie Chiari, Shakespeare’s Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment: The Early Modern ‘Fated Sky’ (Edinburgh, 2018)
- Christopher R. Gilson, ‘Strange and Terrible Wonders: Climate Change in the Early Modern World’ (Texas A&M University PhD thesis, 2015)
- Joseph Hardwick and Randall J. Stephens, ‘Acts of God: Continuities and Change in Christian Responses to Extreme Weather Events from Early Modernity to the Present’, WIREs Climate Change 11:2 (2020)
- Vladimir Janković, Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820 (Manchester, 2000)
- Tayler David Meredith, Changing Climate in Early Modern England, c. 1550-1680 (University of Birmingham PhD thesis, 2019), ch. 5
- John Morgan, ‘Understanding Flooding in Early Modern England’, Journal of Historical Geography 50 (2015), 37-50
Woman reading by William Hoare (c. 1760).1National Galleries of Scotland.
Woman reading by Rembrandt, 1634.2National Galleries of Scotland.
Man reading by Giovanni Battista Piazzette (1683-1754).3Wikimedia Commons.
