Suicide and the Supernatural in Early Modern Britain and America

This open access book approaches self-destructive thoughts and behaviours as inextricable from supernatural belief. It sheds light on the multifaceted ways early modern people negotiated and responded to a range of suicidal thoughts and behaviours which they identified as originating from the devil. Much of the scholarship on suicide has been limited to death by suicide and the legal consequences of this crime. In contrast, this book utilises encounters with the supernatural to access stories of the temptation to harm or kill oneself, as recorded in Britain and New England from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, to centre the experiences of suicidal people and those around them. In unpicking suicide from its criminal context and situating it within a supernatural one, it argues that suicidal thoughts and acts were not nearly so stigmatised in the early modern period as has been assumed. Indeed, the entrenchment of suicidal behaviour within the 'script' of supernatural affliction facilitated its expression.

Imogen Knox is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Exeter, UK.