Cunning Folk by Tabitha Stanmore

Cunning Folk by Tabitha Stanmore

‘A brilliant book, written with wit and vigour’ MALCOLM GASKILL ‘Absolutely fascinating’ IAN MORTIMER Tabitha Stanmore transports us to a time when magic was used to navigate life's challenges and solve problems of both trivial and deadly importance. It’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they’ve been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you’re facing trial. Maybe you’re looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do? In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might have been cunning folk: practitioners of ‘service magic’. Neither feared (like witches), nor venerated (like saints), these people were essential: a ubiquitous presence at a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane and a cherished everyday resource. We meet lovelorn widows, selfless healers and renegade monks; we listen in on Queen Elizabeth I’s astrology readings and track treasure hunters who try to keep peace with fairies. Much like us, premodern people lived in bewildering times, buffeted by forces beyond their control – and their faith in magic has much to teach us about how we accommodate ourselves to the irrational in our allegedly enlightened lives today. Charming in every sense of the word, Cunning Folk is an immersive reconstruction of a bygone world and a thought-provoking commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human.

This is a brilliant book, written with wit and vigour, in which Tabitha Stanmore explores the pre-modern places where magic was real, offering not only practical solutions for ordinary problems but a way of feeling about the world, an emotional relationship between anxious humans, cosmic forces, and the mundane mysteries of their lives * Malcolm Gaskill, author of The Ruin of All Witches *
Absolutely fascinating Cunning Folk is a much-needed book that draws attention to a little-known but important aspect of daily life. Like all good history books, it tells us about ourselves as well as the past. It will both inform and inspire readers * Ian Mortimer, author of Medieval Horizons *
The best introduction to late medieval and early modern popular magic yet written ... Comprehensive, humane, lively, and a great read * Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch *
Tabitha Stanmore’s engaging new social history of magic . . . full of such magical tips and colourful vignettes . . . She’s clearly a sharp reader of social realities, and sometimes offers clear-eyed social assessments of why magical rituals had real-world consequences . . . the result is this cheerful, colourful compendium of stories, which crackles with incident -- Kate Maltby * Financial Times *
A fascinating and intricately researched book that opens a window into another world * Tracy Borman, author of Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I *
This isn't just a book: it's a window on the hopes, passions and lives of Europe five centuries ago. We know the horror film version of magic. Tabitha Stanmore - uncovering a whole treasure house of long-lost private lives - adds the rich, fresh, human version * Michael Pye, author of The Edge of the World *
I adore Cunning Folk. A truly fascinating and human book * Ruth Goodman, author of The Domestic Revolution *
Spirited and richly detailed … With hundreds of colourful incidents drawn from legal records, court chronicles and contemporary accounts, Stanmore hopscotches through history, exploring the uses to which cunning folk were put * New York Times *
Illuminating… Cunning Folk shows us that our forebears were seeking answers through the tools they had * Spectator *
An entertaining history of everyday magic in the Middle Ages … charming … packed with anecdotes … Stanmore takes pains to correct many misperceptions about the period [and] persuasively argues that their stories provide a window on the everyday life of premodern Europeans that proves more intimate than other forms of history * Slate *
Packed with vivid historical anecdotes, this is an intriguing insight into the magical lives of past people and the history of our own superstitions today * Marion Gibson, author of Witchcraft *

Tabitha Stanmore is a social historian
of magic and witchcraft at the University of
Exeter. She is part of the Leverhulme-funded
Seven County Witch-Hunt Project, and her
doctoral thesis was published as Love Spells
and Lost Treasure: Service Magic in England
from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern
Period. She has featured on Radio 3’s Free
Thinking and BBC 4’s Plague Fiction, and her
writing has been published in the Conversation.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781847927316
ISBN 10	1847927319
Title	Cunning Folk
Author	Tabitha Stanmore
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	2024-05-02
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable