[ADDISON (Joseph)].
A Visit to a Witch!
"OLD MOLL HAD OFTEN BEEN BROUGHT BEFORE HIM FOR MAKING CHILDREN SPIT PINS, AND GIVING MAIDS THE NIGHT-MARE"
Rare. OCLC records only a single other copy at Cambridge.
A curious cheap chap book printing of a story by Joseph Addison in which a gentleman encounters an old woman named Moll White who is thought locally to be a witch.
Addison’s fictional account of his meeting (along with a companion, Sir Roger de Coverley) Moll White was first published in The Spectator in July 1711. Here - re-printed in chap book form - the story is seemingly passed off as a true tale designed to capture the imagination of a casual reader. The narrator (who is here anonymous) describes how his friend Sir Richard remarks of the old woman who appeals to them for charity, “this very old woman had the reputation of a witch all over the country” and she is held responsible for all the misfortunes that befall the local people. The pair visit the old woman’s home where they find a broomstick and a cat (“reported to have spoken twice of thrice in her life…”). Sir Richard states that, “old Moll had often been brought before him for making children spit pins, and giving maids the night-mare; and that the country people would be tossing her into a pond, and trying experiments every day, if it was not for him and his Chaplain” (p.5).
It is curious that the publishers decided to re-print such an old story but it no doubt suggests that interest in witches and witchcraft was still popular at the beginning of the 19th-century and poses challenging questions about the status of older, single women in society in this period.
The publisher/printers, John Edwards and Charles Evans were the sons of the great street street literature publisher John Evans senior who died in 1820. The business was run by the sons until 1828.
