Lives of the Necromancers

Published in 1834, William Godwin’s final book surveys magicians, diviners, prophets and reputed necromancers from the ancient world through medieval and early modern Europe. He approaches supernatural claims sceptically while examining the historical imagination that sustained them. Biblical figures, classical legends and notorious adepts pass through a narrative of ambition, deception and belief. The result resembles a procession through civilization’s forbidden biographies, each figure promising that knowledge might reach beyond the limits assigned to ordinary human life.

Early nineteenth-century British occult history