Publisher's Synopsis
"MORE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD: OR THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD DISPLAYED IN FIVE PARTS." This unabridged prestige hardcover edition has been newly typeset and edited, retaining the look and feel of the 1700 original while also prioritizing legibility for the modern reader. Text based primarily on the Salem 1823 edition. Includes footnotes by editor S.P. Fowler and header illustrations from the Salem 1860 edition.
Originally published in 1700 and rarely found in print, Robert Calef's "More Wonders of the Invisible World" provides a more readable and empathetic view of the events of 1692 Salem than the better-known Increase & Cotton Mather book from which its title is adapted.
Calef's work contains a collection of correspondence between the author and Cotton Mather, as well as other interested parties, in debate over the then-recent Salem Witch Trials, and particularly the doctrinal defenses of the use of spectral evidence in the litigation of capital crimes. It additionally discusses, also largely in epistolary form, the misgivings of some parishoners of Salem Village regarding their minister, Mr. Parris, and his acceptance of the trials. Finally, it includes transcripts of some of the indictments, correspondence, and testimony from the witch trials themselves, and a criticism of Cotton Mather's posthumous biography of William Phips, whom Increase Mather had nominated as the lieutenant governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
