A Letter to a Friend — Sir Thomas Browne's meditation on the death of a friend, blending medical observation with philosophical counsel on mortality, virtue, and the brevity of life.
A Perfect Discovery of Witches — Thomas Ady's radical 1661 argument that witch-hunting has no Biblical basis — a systematic demolition of spectral evidence, swimming tests, and imp-marks.
A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados — Richard Ligon's 1657 account of colonial Barbados — sugar plantations, natural history, enslaved peoples, and island society, written from debtor's prison.
A Tryal of Witches at Bury St. Edmonds — The transcript of the 1664 witch trial of Rose Cullender and Amy Duny before Sir Matthew Hale at Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk, with C. Clark's 1838 appendix on the history of English witchcraft persecution.
A Voyage into Tartary — A Frenchman's extraordinary account of his travels through Greece, Turkey, and into the remote interior of Tartary — a rare 17th-century travel narrative of wild adventure and philosophical curiosity.
A Voyage into the Levant — Sir Henry Blount's account of his journey through the Ottoman Empire in 1634 — from Venice through Dalmatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Thrace, Rhodes, and Egypt to Grand Cairo — with observations on Turkish religion, government, and customs.
A Voyage to St. Kilda — Martin Martin's 1698 account of sailing to St. Kilda, the most remote inhabited island in the Hebrides — a firsthand portrait of a people who had never seen a tree, thought writing was sorcery, and lived in the innocence the poets only feigned for the Golden Age.
Annan Water — Annan Water — a Scottish ballad of a lover who drowns crossing the swollen Annan Water to reach his beloved.
Barbara Allen's Cruelty — Barbara Allen's Cruelty — one of the most widely known English ballads, a tale of hard-hearted love and its consequences.
Brief Lives Volume I — John Aubrey's intimate biographical sketches of over 400 notable figures of the English Renaissance, from Shakespeare to Hobbes, compiled between 1669 and 1696.
Brief Lives Volume II — The most important collection of biographical sketches from 17th-century England. Volume II covers lives from I to Y, including Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones, John Milton, Isaac Newton, William Penn, Sir Walter Raleigh, William Shakespeare, Edmund Waller, and Sir Christopher Wren.
Dampiers New Voyage Round the World — William Dampier's circumnavigation of the globe (1679–1691) — the pirate-naturalist who inspired Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, and Darwin's Beagle voyage. The book that made the English-speaking world look outward.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions — John Donne's meditations on illness and mortality, composed on what he believed to be his deathbed in 1623, together with his final sermon preached at Whitehall weeks before his death in 1631.
Foxs Book of Martyrs — The most influential martyrology in the English language — a history of Christian persecution from the apostolic age through the Reformation, compiled from John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1563) and later sources. This edition, published by the John C. Winston Company, condenses Foxe's massive original into a single readable volume covering twenty-three chapters of trial, suffering, and defiance.
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners — John Bunyan's spiritual autobiography, written from Bedford gaol in 1666 — the raw, hallucinatory inner life of a Puritan dissenter imprisoned for unlicensed preaching.
Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial — Browne's meditation on death, burial, and the vanity of monuments — prompted by the discovery of ancient funeral urns in Norfolk. One of the greatest prose works in English. Published 1658.
Lithobolia — Richard Chamberlain's eyewitness journal of a three-month poltergeist haunting at Great Island, New Hampshire, 1682 — one of the earliest supernatural narratives from colonial America.
Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects — John Aubrey's compendium of the supernatural, the prophetic, and the marvellous in seventeenth-century England — dreams, apparitions, omens, fatalities, knockings, crystal visions, magick, ecstacy, second sight, and the corps-candles of Wales.
Observations upon Experimental Philosophy — Margaret Cavendish's natural philosophy — a systematic critique of experimental science and defense of rational speculation (1666)
Pandaemonium — Richard Bovet's 1684 collection of supernatural encounters from the English West Country — the Fairy-Boy of Leith, the Demon of Spraiton, apparitions, fairies, and witchcraft, presented as evidence against theological skepticism.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica — Sir Thomas Browne's encyclopedia of popular errors — a magnificent seventeenth-century examination of every false belief from whether crystal is frozen ice to whether elephants lack joints. First published 1646.
Religio Medici — Sir Thomas Browne's personal confession of faith — the religion of a physician who traveled through Catholic and Protestant Europe and emerged with charity broad enough for all. First published 1643.
Remarkable Providences — Increase Mather's 1684 compendium of supernatural events, sea deliverances, demonic possessions, apparitions, and remarkable providences in colonial New England.
Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale — Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale — Robin Hood rescues a young man's bride from a forced marriage to an old knight.
Robin Hood's Death and Burial — Robin Hood's Death and Burial — the ballad of Robin Hood's final betrayal and death at Kirklees Priory.
Saducismus Triumphatus — The most important English text on witchcraft and apparitions, containing the famous Drummer of Tedworth poltergeist case, philosophical arguments for the reality of spirits, and twenty-eight witch trial accounts from seventeenth-century England.
Satans Invisible World Discovered — A 1685 collection of Scottish supernatural narratives — witch trials, ghost stories, poltergeist accounts, and demonic encounters — compiled by the Glasgow professor of philosophy, proving against the atheists of his age that the invisible world is real.
Silex Scintillans — The sacred poems of Henry Vaughan (1621–1695), first published in two parts (1650 and 1655). Devotional verse from the Welsh metaphysical poet, deeply influenced by George Herbert.
The Banks o' Yarrow — The Banks o' Yarrow — a Scottish ballad of betrayal and murder by the banks of the Yarrow Water.
The Baptized Turk — A Narrative of the Happy Conversion of Signior Rigep Dandulo, from Islam to Christianity in Restoration England (1658).
The Blazing World — One of the earliest works of science fiction in English — a woman enters a world at the North Pole populated by hybrid creatures and becomes their Empress. Written by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, in 1666.
The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror — The foundational text of the Anabaptist and Mennonite traditions — a chronicle of Christian martyrdom from the time of Christ to 1660, compiled by Thieleman J. van Braght from authentic chronicles and testimonies.
The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror — Part One — The Anabaptist book of martyrs. A thousand-page chronicle of those who were baptized upon confession of faith and suffered for the testimony of Jesus, from the time of Christ to A.D. 1660. Part One covers the first fifteen centuries.
The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror — Part Two — Part Two of the Anabaptist book of martyrs. The heart of the Martyrs Mirror — detailed accounts of Anabaptist martyrdoms from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including letters from prison, trial transcripts, and confessions of faith.
The Discovery of a World in the Moone — John Wilkins's 1638 treatise arguing that the moon is a habitable world — one of the first works of popular science in English, written by the future Bishop of Chester and co-founder of the Royal Society.
The Discovery of Witches — Matthew Hopkins' 1647 pamphlet defending his witch-finding methods in East Anglia during the English Civil War — the Witchfinder General's own account of swimming tests, body searches, sleep deprivation, and the confession process that sent hundreds to the gallows.
The Fause Lover — The Fause Lover — a ballad of a maiden betrayed by a false lover who reveals himself as the Devil.
The Garden of Cyrus — Sir Thomas Browne's meditation on the quincuncial pattern in nature, art, and the cosmos — the companion volume to Urn-Burial (1658).
The History of Lapland — Preface and Chapters I–XI of Johannes Scheffer's 1674 ethnographic masterwork on the Sami people — the first scholarly study of Sami religion and magic, commissioned by the Chancellor of Sweden. Chapters XII–XXXV continue in the companion file.
The History of Lapland — Chapters XII-XXXV — Chapters XII–XXXV of Johannes Scheffer's 1674 account of Lapland and the Sami people — government, language, dress, diet, hunting, marriage, wildlife, and natural resources.
The Kingdom of Darkness — Nathaniel Crouch's 1688 compendium of nearly eighty accounts of demons, specters, witches, apparitions, poltergeists, and diabolical possessions — from New England haunted houses to English witch trials to European pacts with the Devil — published under the pseudonym R.B. at the Bell in the Poultrey near Cheapside.
The Life of Tamerlane the Great — Samuel Clarke's 1664 biography of Tamerlane (Timur), the Tartar conqueror — a vivid Early Modern English account of his wars against Moscow, China, Bajazet the Turk, Egypt, and Persia, drawn from Arabic and European sources.
The Mermaid — The Mermaid — a ballad of supernatural enchantment and drowning.
The Mowing-Devil — An anonymous broadside pamphlet from 1678 recounting how the Devil mowed a Hertfordshire farmer's oats in perfect circles — the earliest known account of what would later be called a crop circle.
The Mysteryes of Nature and Art — John Bate's 1634 handbook of practical wonders — water engines, fireworks, painting, etching, medicines, and the magnificent experiments of an Elizabethan maker.
The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson — Mary Rowlandson's narrative of her captivity during King Philip's War (1675–76) — the first bestselling book in American literature, a Puritan woman's account of eleven weeks among the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag during one of the most devastating conflicts in colonial New England.
The Pilgrims Progress — John Bunyan's immortal allegory of the Christian life, written in Bedford Gaol and published in 1678 — the most widely read work of religious fiction in the English language.
The Rare Adventures and Painefull Peregrinations — A Scottish traveller's account of nineteen years and thirty-six thousand miles on foot across Europe, Asia, and Africa, including his torture by the Spanish Inquisition.
The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying — Jeremy Taylor's masterwork on the art of dying well — a guide to preparing the soul for death through the practice of virtue, patience, and faith, written in the shadow of his patron's bereavement during the English Civil War.
The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living — Jeremy Taylor's comprehensive guide to Christian virtue — a manual for living well through care of time, sobriety, justice, and religion. The companion volume to Holy Dying, and one of the supreme achievements of English devotional prose.
The Secret Commonwealth of Elves Fauns and Fairies — The Rev. Robert Kirk's account of the fairy world, written in 1691 by the minister of Aberfoyle, Scotland, with Andrew Lang's scholarly introduction from 1893.
The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James — Captain Thomas James's 1633 journal of his harrowing voyage into Hudson Bay in search of the Northwest Passage — storms, ice, starvation, and near-death wintering on Charleton Island.
The Temple — George Herbert's masterwork of English devotional verse — 164 sacred poems exploring the architecture of faith, doubt, and surrender, published posthumously in 1633.
The Twa Corbies — The Twa Corbies — a Scottish ballad in which two ravens discuss a slain knight whose body lies unattended.
The Wonderfull Yeare — Thomas Dekker's eyewitness pamphlet on the death of Queen Elizabeth and the Great Plague of London, 1603 — one of the masterworks of Jacobean prose.
The Wonders of the Invisible World — The primary documents of the 1692 Salem witch trials — Cotton Mather's defence of the proceedings and Increase Mather's counter-argument on spectral evidence.
Waly, Waly, Love be Bonny — Waly, Waly, Love be Bonny — a Scottish lament of love's inconstancy and the sorrows of a forsaken lover.
Works of Anne Bradstreet — The first published poet in the American colonies — Puritan piety and tender domestic observation from the New World.