Hill posits that the social conditions led directly to the accusations that led to the deaths of 20 probably innocent people. For those fascinated by the Salem witch trials, this is compelling reading and the sourcebook. Book Critique-A Delusion of Satan : The Salem Witch Trials essays A Delusion of Satan : The Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill is a book describing the. Frances Hill, in this book, examines the political and social circumstances extant at that time and leads the reader through the most notorious witch hunt in history. Always drawing on firsthand documents, she illustrates the historical background to the witchhunt and shows how the trials have been represented, and sometimes distorted, by historians-and how they have fired the imaginations of poets, playwrights, and novelists. A Delusion of Satan A Delusion of Satan, was written by Frances Hill and covers in the personal situations of the people in Salem during the Salem Witch. In The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Frances Hill provides and astutely comments upon the actual documents from the trial-examinations of suspected witches, eyewitness accounts of 'Satanic influence,' as well as the testimony of those who retained their reason and defied the madness. Within two years, twenty men and women are hanged or pressed to death and over a hundred others imprisoned and impoverished. Against the backdrop of a Puritan theocracy threatened by change, in a population terrified not only of eternal damnation but of the earthly dangers of Indian massacres and recurrent smallpox epidemics, a small group of girls denounces a black slave and others as worshipers of Satan.

A delusion of satan by frances hill