First Edition. New York: Charles N. Baldwin, 1817.

Narrow 18mo (6 x 3.25 inches). (i-vii), viii-ix, (13-15), 16-120, (2)pp. With a typographical table on p.114. Text collated complete. Lacking original boards, thus Fair. Textblock trimmed at top edge only. Paper spine remnants and an odd supplied cover and front endpapers, likely fitted early-mid twentieth century in a sympathetic but feeble attempt. Half title and rear blank (with a 1-in chip to the upper corner and small hole toward bottom). Blank leaf tipped to rear joint to protect the torn final leaf of the volume; supplied with a loose rear board and nested in mylar for support and protection. 

A weird copy—in addition to the inconsistent restoration attempts, two news clippings are pinned/pasted in the upper margins of 104-105 relaying bovine anomalies: “Cow gives birth to triplets” and “A cow belonging to J. N. Sawyer of Newark, O. Recently gave birth to fifty-six calves in one day. One of the calves was alive and of ordinary size, while the others were about the size of small kittens, and died, together with the cow.” Erased pencil signature on ffep faintly reads [Mrs.?] H. V. N. Radcliffe. Rare in commerce: Last recorded in Rarebookhub at auction in 1989 (in a sammelband) and 1980; not before that since 1922. Note: AAS records the 1818 issue with the exact textblock of the 1817 first edition, distinguishing the year only on the cover, therefore the exact issue date of this copy can't be definitively stated, only that it is the first edition textblock. American Imprints 42071; Wegelin 1133.

Scott’s epic poem is considered the first literary treatment of the Salem Witch Trials, presenting a narrative of demonically possessed wanderer, tricky witch hunt, trial by water and punishment of death by hanging. He leans on established tropes of witches’ fables, while giving considerable attention to the procedural drama of the witch hunt and trial, the problematic muddle of religion and law, and stereotypes of gender fueling the hysteria. The verse has its highs and lows, invoking copper cauldrons, cats, and perceived dangers of ageing women who don’t care for men.

Much is written about the legacy of Salem in developing a deliberately “American” literary and cultural identity. As the first literary work of what became a hugely popular subject, The Sorceress constitutes a major event in developing that canon—but it also offers an unintentional record of contemporary practices in manufacturing cultural heritage in a nation that was still younger than many of its citizens.

The poem is followed by notes on each canto, and though many are gratuitous explanations of allusions, some tether in specifics of the American landscape and experience, like mentioning the olfactory stain of smoked herring emanating from Taunton, Massachusetts. He also explains an allusion to sacred Native American burial mounds (“And many a sage conjecture shows / The spot where savage chiefs repose”), by relaying the third-hand testimony of a graverobber who stole from such a site, (“That they are artificial, cannot be doubted, for at a considerable depth on digging into them, is found a substance which is evidently the crumbled remains of bones,” 92), invoking a contemporary atrocity in the course of ridiculing another and unintentionally illustrating some of the violence that was part of constructing "heritage" in the United States.

See: Adams, The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Coad, “The Gothic Element in American Literature before 1835.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 24, no. 1, 1925, pp. 72–93.