Henrietta D. Kimball and the Salem of 1892 | Lumitheca
Henrietta D. Kimball
Witchcraft Illustrated published in 1892
Henrietta D. Kimball wrote Witchcraft Illustrated two hundred years after the Salem trials. She wanted readers to picture both the town in which people had faced accusations in 1692 and the Massachusetts city they could visit in 1892.
Published in Boston by G. A. Kimball, the book moves between an account of witchcraft and a guide to old and new Salem. Buildings give the reader places to look for traces of the trials. Other illustrations take a different liberty. One imagines Cotton Mather encountering Tituba in the woods. Its appearance in the University of Virginia’s Salem archive preserves an example of how nineteenth-century illustrators pictured the accused.
A name on a Boston book
The edition identifies Henrietta D. Kimball as the writer. It gives much less away about her own life. Her birthplace, family and training have yet to be securely established. Even the surname shared by writer and publisher leaves their relationship an open question.
