Helen, As you probably know, the Salem Witchcraft Papers are out of print, but until the Cambridge edition comes out there is always the very valuable online and searchable Salem Witchcraft Papers. And if you really want hard copy, you can print off it. Go to Yahoo and type in Salem Witchcraft. That will bring you to the Danvers archival site and the link to the Salem Witchcraft Papers. It is all there. If you have problems accessing it or using it let me know, and if I can't help, I'm sure Ben Ray can--he's the one who set it up. It is reasonable enough for you to have assumed that Boyer and Nissenbaum would have gone to the original documents and checked the transcriptions, but that is a very large project and they might not have brought the WPA papers into print if they had felt compelled to check the transcriptions. The only criticism I have of them is that they didn't make as clear as I would have liked to have seen that the task was simply beyond the scope of what they were doing. But they did perform a valuable service by bringing that typescript into print. Regarding your home library, I share your skepticism about the frequent explanation of women being caught up in the episode because of their medical work. It is a theory that does not really hold up under careful scrutiny when applied to Salem. Perhaps it is useful in some other contexts. My own analysis of the episode appears in Salem Story:Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). It is in paperback and has most recently been reprinted in 1998. Pages 171-173 have some commentary on Ann Pudeator that might interest you. It is hard to be objective about one's own work, but if you like studies that empasize information over theory, you might like this one. As with all books, it has its errors. The most interesting one to me is that I developed an early interpretation of Tituba's treatment by the judicial system that I subsequently discovered to be wrong. The problem originated in that Boyer and Nissenbaum incorrectly had her appearance in court in May 1692. Subsequently, I discovered from the manuscript that this was a mistranscription and the date was 1693. I pointed out my error--and that of B and N--in an essay entitled Tituba's Story that appeared last June in The New England Quarterly. I mention this error, because it highlights the importance of accuracy in textual transcription. One number mistranscribed dramatically alters an historical interpretation. By the way, in my other message I forgot to mantion that Mary Beth Norton is a descendant of Mary Bradbury. I suspect I am one of the few--perhaps the only--members of this list who has no family history connection with the trials. My interest in the subject, though, remains deep. Best wishes, Bernie