Cotton Mather was a Puritan minister who played a significant role in the Salem Witch Trials. Although most people believed in the existence of witchcraft and demonic magic, many contemporaries were critical of the processes and judgments of the Salem trials, particularly the reliance on “spectral evidence,” or visions of the accused witches ostensibly seen by their victims. As public opinion turned against the prosecuting ministers, Mather penned Wonders of the Invisible World to defend his actions. It offered a carefully curated—and arguably revisionist—history that insisted upon the presence of witchcraft in Salem but cast Mather and his peers as cautious and reluctant prosecutors. This 1693 London edition appeared the same year as the first edition in Boston.