"Mystical Bedlam explores the social history of insanity of early seventeenth-century England by means of a detailed analysis of the records of Richard Napier, a clergyman and astrological physician, who treated over 2000 mentally disturbed patients between 1597 and 1634. Napier's clients were drawn from every social rank and his therapeutic techniques included all the types of psychological healing practised at the time. His vivid descriptions of his clients' afflictions and complaints illuminate the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people. This book goes beyond simply analysing mental disorder in a seventeenth-century astrological and medical practice. It reveals contemporary attitudes towards family life, describes the appeal of witchcraft and demonology to ordinary villagers, and explains the social and intellectual basis for the eclectic blend of scientific, magical, and religious therapies practised before the English Revolution" (publisher).

"Sleepless Souls is a social and cultural history of suicide in early modern England. It traces the rise and fall of the crime of self-murder and explores why suicide came to be harshly punished in the sixteenth century, and why it was subsequently gradually decriminalized, tolerated, and even sentimentalized. It is a readable, detailed, and scholarly examination of the changing meaning of self-destruction, which provides an illuminating perspective of the sweep of cultural and social change in England over three centuries" (publisher)