The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Deception, Witchcraft, Murder, and the King of England

In 1604, 20-year-old Anne Gunter was bewitched: she foamed at the mouth, contorted wildly in her bedchamber, went into trances. Her garters and bodices were perpetually unlacing themselves. Her signature symptom was to vomit pins and "she voided some pins downwards as well by her water or otherwise.." Popular history at its best, "The Bewitching of Anne Gunter" opens a fascinating window onto the past. It's a tale of controlling fathers, willful daughters, nosy neighbors, power relations between peasants and gentry, and village life in early-modern Europe. Above all it's an original and revealing story of one young woman's experience with the greatly misunderstood phenomenon of witchcraft. James Sharpe is Professor of History at York University and the author of "Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in" "Early Modern History" and other works of social history.

• Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent
• Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (Studies in the History of Sexuality)
• Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy
• The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe
• The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power
• Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--and Started the Protestant Reformation
• The Witchcraft Sourcebook