The events of June to September 1692 in Massachusetts have long been an infamous page in American history. A hysteria, now known as the Salem witch trials, swept the colony and led to 19 people being tried for the practice of witchcraft and consequently executed. Eighteen of them were hung at Gallows Hill near Salem whilst one elderly man was crushed to death. But public unease with these events soon followed and five years later, the town of Salem held a public fast in mourning for these unjust killings and one judge and 12 jurors publicly apologized. In 1711, the colony compensated many surviving victims and their families.

This early New England book was written by Cotton Mather (1663–1728) in 1693 and it defended his role in the trials. Cotton was born in Boston to a prominent Puritan Minister, Increase Mather, and became an influential Church leader in his own right. Although he cautioned the judges against relying on “spectral” evidence and advocated the use of prayer and fasting to cure the afflicted, he still viewed New England as a battleground in the war against Satan and, since writing this book, his name has been associated with support for the trials.

The Wonders of the Invisible World was the official New England defence of the proceedings of the court and intended by Mather to expose witchcraft and to support his friends in the government. The book, before going on to give accounts of six of the most notorious trials of 1692, gives a staunch defence of all those officials involved, including an endorsement of Mather himself by William Stoughton. The colonial population of New England believed that they were a chosen generation, doing God’s work in claiming what was formerly the Devil’s territory. Mather, as one of the colony's most prominent ministers, had influence both in matters of God and politics. He had a large influence in the appointment of Stoughton as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. Many of those in positions of power during the witchcraft trials were also engaged in fighting the Indigenous Peoples of the U.S., who English settlers had long believed to be devil worshippers. Some historians have linked the Indian War with the Salem Witch trials, speculating that a failure to defeat the devil on the battlefield led to a need to defeat him in the courtroom. During the 1692 trials judges took seriously claims of witchcraft that had been dismissed from court in previous years.

As Mather claimed not to have been present at the trials, the book uses court records to give an account of each one, with detailed descriptions of the number of accusers, the accusations, evidence, and the order of the proceedings of the court. These, along with the rarity of the book, make the document an invaluable record.

The trials are commonly regarded by contemporary historians as being neither a conspiracy by locals, nor the result of an unknown medical affliction, but merely a product of the frenzied era of pre-enlightenment mystical beliefs and a struggle to survive in a harsh new world of frontier warfare.

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