The witch in history was a very different creature from her modern counterpart. Lois Martin sets out to explore the historical background to the European witchcraft phenomenon, examining in detail the growth of the ideological, cutural and legal concepts that eventually led to the carnage of the Witch Craze in the 16th and 17th centuries which, it is estimated, may have claimed the lives of 40,000 people. A perfect gap-bridger between lay interest and the academic history of one of the oldest practices in the Western world.