Martha McGill
Biographic Data
| ID | 5433871 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martha McGill |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martha |
| FAMILY NAME | McGill |
| SIGNATURE | MCGILL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Scottish State and the Experience of Government, c. 1560-1707
Original Memoirs of Apparitions & Spirits in Wales’ ( c .1738)
The folkloric anecdotes collated by the Rev. Edmund Jones (1702–93) constitute our richest surviving source material on supernatural beliefs in eighteenth-century Wales. Published in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Jones’s writings appear to be temporally distant from their nearest intellectual antecedents: the ‘anti-Sadducee’ works of the late seventeenth century. This article discusses a previously overlooked manuscript on apparitio…
The Conversion of a Cork Candle-Maker
In 1788, Cork candle-maker Cadwallader Acteson was driven to repent of his sins by a host of otherworldly visitants. The story was recorded and circulated in manuscript, almost certainly by the Methodist writer Hester Ann Rogers. This article is a transcription of the copy, ascribed to Elizabeth Ritchie, that resides at the Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, Manchester. Cadwallader’s idiosyncratic…
Bodies of earth and air
Scholarship on the returning dead has tended to contrast corporeal revenants, or risen corpses, with incorporeal ghosts, or phantoms returning from the afterlife. This article argues that it is misleading to draw so clean a distinction between material and spiritual apparitions. Focusing on accounts discussed in Britain between c.1200 and c.1750, the article demonstrates that the bodies of the returning dead were persistently ambiguous. Popular s…
The Decline of Magic
Keith Thomas's magisterial Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (1971) marked the first serious attempt to formulate an academic history of magical beliefs and remains a mainstay of historiographical reviews on the early modern supernatural. Almost fifty years on, Michael Hunter's The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment makes a brave attempt to rethink Thomas's famou…
Strange Histories
Darren Oldridge's Strange Histories is bright, colorful, and perpetually engaging. In ten concise chapters, Oldridge explores beliefs about dragons, trials by ordeal, angels and demons, the walking dead, criminal trials brought against animals, witchcraft, werewolves, visionary experiences, attitudes toward suffering, and religious persecution. He writes in a clear, accessible style, and the chapters contain a fascinating assortment of examples. …
A Protestant Purgatory? Visions of an Intermediate State in Eighteenth-century Scotland
The protestant afterlife is generally presented in binary terms, with departed souls going directly to either heaven or hell. However, the possible existence of an intermediate state for the dead was discussed by protestant theologians from the reformation onwards. This article traces the evolution of these debates in Scotland, with particular focus on the eighteenth century. The bishops Archibald Campbell, Thomas Rattray and George Innes produce…
Houston, Bride Ales and Penny Weddings
England and Scotland in the Fourteenth Century
Bodies of earth and air
Scholarship on the returning dead has tended to contrast corporeal revenants, or risen corpses, with incorporeal ghosts, or phantoms returning from the afterlife. This article argues that it is misleading to draw so clean a distinction between material and spiritual apparitions. Focusing on accounts discussed in Britain between c.1200 and c.1750, the article demonstrates that the bodies of the returning dead were persistently ambiguous. Popular s…
A Protestant Purgatory? Visions of an Intermediate State in Eighteenth-century Scotland
The protestant afterlife is generally presented in binary terms, with departed souls going directly to either heaven or hell. However, the possible existence of an intermediate state for the dead was discussed by protestant theologians from the reformation onwards. This article traces the evolution of these debates in Scotland, with particular focus on the eighteenth century. The bishops Archibald Campbell, Thomas Rattray and George Innes produce…
England and Scotland in the Fourteenth Century
Houston, Bride Ales and Penny Weddings
A Protestant Purgatory? Visions of an Intermediate State in Eighteenth-century Scotland
The protestant afterlife is generally presented in binary terms, with departed souls going directly to either heaven or hell. However, the possible existence of an intermediate state for the dead was discussed by protestant theologians from the reformation onwards. This article traces the evolution of these debates in Scotland, with particular focus on the eighteenth century. The bishops Archibald Campbell, Thomas Rattray and George Innes produce…
Strange Histories
Darren Oldridge's Strange Histories is bright, colorful, and perpetually engaging. In ten concise chapters, Oldridge explores beliefs about dragons, trials by ordeal, angels and demons, the walking dead, criminal trials brought against animals, witchcraft, werewolves, visionary experiences, attitudes toward suffering, and religious persecution. He writes in a clear, accessible style, and the chapters contain a fascinating assortment of examples. …
The Decline of Magic
Keith Thomas's magisterial Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (1971) marked the first serious attempt to formulate an academic history of magical beliefs and remains a mainstay of historiographical reviews on the early modern supernatural. Almost fifty years on, Michael Hunter's The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment makes a brave attempt to rethink Thomas's famou…
The Conversion of a Cork Candle-Maker
In 1788, Cork candle-maker Cadwallader Acteson was driven to repent of his sins by a host of otherworldly visitants. The story was recorded and circulated in manuscript, almost certainly by the Methodist writer Hester Ann Rogers. This article is a transcription of the copy, ascribed to Elizabeth Ritchie, that resides at the Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands Research Institute and Library, Manchester. Cadwallader’s idiosyncratic…
Bodies of earth and air
Scholarship on the returning dead has tended to contrast corporeal revenants, or risen corpses, with incorporeal ghosts, or phantoms returning from the afterlife. This article argues that it is misleading to draw so clean a distinction between material and spiritual apparitions. Focusing on accounts discussed in Britain between c.1200 and c.1750, the article demonstrates that the bodies of the returning dead were persistently ambiguous. Popular s…
The Scottish State and the Experience of Government, c. 1560-1707
Original Memoirs of Apparitions & Spirits in Wales’ ( c .1738)
The folkloric anecdotes collated by the Rev. Edmund Jones (1702–93) constitute our richest surviving source material on supernatural beliefs in eighteenth-century Wales. Published in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Jones’s writings appear to be temporally distant from their nearest intellectual antecedents: the ‘anti-Sadducee’ works of the late seventeenth century. This article discusses a previously overlooked manuscript on apparitio…
History (8 works) · Art (7 works) · History (6 works) · Law (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Scottish History and National Identity (4 works) · Ancient history (3 works) · Art history (3 works)