Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft

He presents a wide survey of attitudes to demonology and witchcraft from Biblical times up to the 19th century, illustrating it with a large number of anecdotes of individual cases.

[1] In 1809 he had suggested to his friend Robert Surtees that they work together on a "system of Daemonology", and in 1812 he proposed to collaborate with Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe on a collection of comic stories on the same subject.

[13] Scott was in an unusually good position to write a book on demonology and witchcraft, since, as Lockhart reminded him, "You have a whole library de re magica [on the subject of magic] at Abbotsford",[14] but he nevertheless had to call on his friends for help in finding much out-of-the-way material.

Important sources for Scott's work include Samuel Hibbert's Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions,[15] Robert Pitcairn's Criminal Trials and other Proceedings before the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, Robert Kirk's Essay on the Subterranean Commonwealth, Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi, John Ferriar's "Of Popular Illusions and More Particularly of Modern Demonology", Thomas Jackson's Treatise Containing the Originall of Unbelief, and a host of primary sources in the form of anecdotes sent him by his correspondents, not to mention his own memories of personal experiences, such as buying a favourable wind from a witch in Orkney during a voyage he undertook in 1814.

[17] The first reaction to the publication of Scott's book came in a flurry of letters from readers wishing to inform him of obscure witches of the past or of the correspondent's own supernatural experiences.

[18] This was followed by the appearance of a number of treatises on kindred subjects, including Charles Upham's Lectures on Witchcraft (1831), David Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic (1832), and William Godwin's Lives of the Necromancers (1834).

[19] Scott's book has also been credited with provoking the long line of Victorian novels on necromantic themes that includes Harrison Ainsworth's The Lancashire Witches and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

[22] When Lockhart came to write his biography of Scott (1837–1838) he dealt in a rather supercilious manner with the Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, in which he saw clear signs of the author's recent stroke.

[1] Lewis Spence, for example, called the Letters so many doors opening on the treasure-house of a lifetime's gleaning...nothing they contain in the richness of their hoard is more astonishing than the superior insight distinguishing the accompanying comment.

The origins of human superstition, as then understood, are here set forth with a clearness and accuracy of method which for all time mapped out the direction which this department of the science of folklore was to take.