Marion Gibson author page

Marion Gibson biography

Marion Gibson is a British historian and author specialising in witchcraft, magic and their representation in literature and culture. She is Emerita Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter and has published extensively on the history and literature of witchcraft.

Her academic books include Reading Witchcraft: Stories of Early English Witches, Possession, Puritanism and Print, Witchcraft Myths in American Culture, Imagining the Pagan Past, Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft and Witchcraft: The Basics. The latter, published by Routledge in 2018, examines changing ideas about witchcraft from the Middle Ages to modern culture.

Gibson’s The Witches of St Osyth, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022, investigates the Essex witchcraft accusations and trials of 1581-82. Drawing on archival evidence, it reconstructs the experiences of the women and man accused and places the cases within their local communities.

Her first trade history, Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2023. Using cases from Europe, Africa and the Americas, it traces the changing history of witch trials and examines the experiences of people accused of witchcraft.

Gibson followed it with Witchland: A Tale of Witch Hunting and War in Seventeenth-Century Britain, published by Simon & Schuster UK on 30 July 2026. The book examines the witch-hunting panic that spread through England and Scotland during the upheavals of the 1640s.