This was very good. I had never heard of the author before but Carol Ann Lee does a great job at examining records, presenting the evidence, trying to give a bit of flesh to people who have left no records themselves. I thought I knew roughly what happened during the Pendle witch trials, but it was actually a lot more complicated than I expected, partly because a lot of the characters have the same first names (mothers and daughters often do), the same last names without being exactly related, and because there's a lot going on, with characters all linked through various ways - so and so's daughter's goddaughter was the neighbour of so and so, who accused the former's sister in law, etc. It can be hard to follow at times, but Carol Ann Lee also did an excellent job at giving a context I didn't have - I read a few other books on witchcraft the past couple of years so I knew what books had been published back then and what the legal system said, but she also goes at length about the religious context and the persecution of Catholics. There's a chapter about the White Pater Noster that the Device family used as a "charm" and its regional variations, and the suspicion that fell on anyone who may be a papist, with your neighbours watching you and using it against you. She's also very detailed when it comes to the abject poverty that people experienced. Overall I think I had come to think of witchcraft solely or mostly as a feminist theme, and she made it about this and about economic inequalities and religious persecution.

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