Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World included accounts of five trials. Published in 1693, the book presented selected Salem witch-trial proceedings as evidence of the reality of witchcraft and as a defense of the authorities’ handling of the crisis.
Mather did not write a complete transcript of every Salem case. Much of the material was copied from court records supplied by Stephen Sewall, a court clerk. The selected cases included the proceedings against Martha Carrier, whose trial became one of the book’s most famous narratives.
The book’s purpose was partly apologetic. Mather sought to portray the trials as careful and religiously justified, although he also acknowledged that spectral evidence should not by itself establish guilt. Because the work appeared after the main wave of executions, it became both a record of the trials and an attempt to shape their public meaning.
Readers sometimes confuse the number of trial accounts with the number of people executed or accused. Those totals are different: the book contained five trial narratives, while the broader Salem crisis involved dozens of defendants and nineteen executions by hanging.