[Rarebooks] fa: SALEM WITCH TRIALS in The Athenian Mercury 1692

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending MONDAY, May 28. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/btsuvun

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.



The Athenian Mercury. Vol. IX, Numb. 6. Tuesday, December 31, 1692. [and] Vol. IX, Numb. 7. January 3, 1692 [i.e. 1693]. London: Printed for John Dunton at the Raven in the Poultrey, 1692 [1693 New Style]. Two sheets, folio (32.5 x 19.5 cm.; 12 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.), printed on both sides. Mild toning and wear to the edges, one or two small spots, otherwise clean and sound.

Two consecutive issues of this popular late seventeenth-century English coffeehouse newspaper, both with near-contemporary references to the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692. No. 7 features an advertisement in large type for the just-published English edition of Cotton Mather's The Tryals of several Witches, lately Executed in New-England, with many remarkable Curiosities therein Occurring (published in America as Wonders of the Invisible World). Issue no. 6 opens with a question, purportedly submitted by a reader, asking the editor's reaction to the "strange and surprizing" news from Massachusetts : "…'tis said that Nineteen Witches have been lately Executed in New-England, and that there is an Hundred Witches still in Prison, committed upon the Accusation of fifty Witches, some of Boston, but most about Salem and the towns adjacent…" The answer directs the reader to consult Mather's "Book of Tryals" and prints a testimonial to the book's veracity by William Stoughton and Samuel Sewall, two of the magistrates directly involved in the trials — a canny bit of cross-promotion, since the publisher of both Mather's Tryals and the Athenian Mercury were one and the same: John Dunton.

In keeping with the eclectic nature of the Mercury, these issues also feature a lengthy poem entitled "Voluntary on the Nativity of our Blessed Lord, Christmas-Day 1692," questions on supernatural occurrences, and a query as to "Where a Woman may be found that answers the description of a good Housewife given by Solomon?" etc.