The discoverie of witchcraft ... Being a reprint of the first edition published in 1584 / by Reginald Scot ; Edited with explanatory notes, glossary and introduction by Brinsley Nicholson.

  • Scot Reginald, 1538?-1599.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The discoverie of witchcraft ... Being a reprint of the first edition published in 1584 / by Reginald Scot ; Edited with explanatory notes, glossary and introduction by Brinsley Nicholson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    of its having been burnt, and placed among the prohibited books. In like manner, and for the like purpose, and as before, without entry in the Stationers' Registers, there was brought out the third, and so- called folio edition of 1665, though the sheets are in sixes. All but the title-page, which, curiously enough, was again re-written, though still bearing, like the second, the words, By Reginald Scot Esquire; it is a careless reprint of that second, with all its errors, and new ones superadded. But as a novelty and inducement to buy, nine chapters, commencing the fifteenth book, and a second book of the Discourse on Devils and Spirits, were added by an anonymous author. Who this anonymity was, I have uselessly spent some little time in inquiring, time that might have been better employed, even had I found him. But it goes to prove that these additions were merely made for novelty's sake, and its glamour and gain, in that the writer was a believer in, and not improbably, from his minute directions, as well as from his reticence, a practiser of witchcraft, or of what he thought to be witchcraft. He also, and I give this as one possible clue, was a strong believer in the perishable Astral spirit of a man, as well as of Astral spirits in general, and much of his Discourse is taken up with remarks on these. I inay here add, as showing the carelessness with which these second and third editions were edited, a note of the errata marked in the first and not corrected in them. 75, 21. We, so the second; in the third the (,) is rightly placed after years. A correction that could have been made by the least intelligent of readers. 168, 31. Earth read firmament.'' Not corrected. 247,29. Write it. Not corrected. 269, 16. If there be masses delete U. Retained, but the second attempts to correct by inserting no before masses, and the third follows suit, though it is as nonsensical as before. 463, 16. Their business read that business. Not corrected. Beyond these, the limited edition now printed is the only other known to me. As stated in the preface, it is a reprint of the first edition, with some slight alterations in the lettering, but not in the spelling. Besides the few errata that have been found and recorded, the small heading on its left hand pages up to p. 24 is Chap.—,