Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft

Traditions

Witchcraft and demonology

Role in the tradition

Secondary source A study of the tradition from outside it: history, scholarship, anthropology or reference.

Public attention

Notable Wikipedia has an article about it in 3 languages.

• Read at sacred-texts.com ↗ sacred-texts.com checked against the Internet Archive's copy of May 13, 2026, because the site refuses scripts · archived copy
• Read at gutenberg.org ↗ gutenberg.org checked September 11, 2026

Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft Addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq. (1830) was a study of witchcraft and the supernatural by Sir Walter Scott. A lifelong student of folklore, Scott was able to draw on a wide-ranging collection of primary and secondary sources. His book found many readers throughout the 19th century, and exercised a significant influence in promoting the Victorian vogue for Gothic and ghostly fiction. Though on first publication it met with mixed reviews, it is now recognised as a pioneering work of scientific anthropology, treating of its subject in an acute and analytical way which prefigures later scholarship on the subject, as well as presenting a highly readable collection of supernatural anecdotes.

From the Wikipedia article Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, revision 1338400214, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikidata Q97703977: “1830 book by Sir Walter Scott”.