author

J. S. Forsyth

An early 19th-century British writer, J. S. Forsyth is best known for Demonologia, a wide-ranging attempt to explain superstition, occult belief, and popular fears in rational terms. His books move across subjects that were deeply popular in his time, from folklore and health to botany and antiquarian history.

1 Audiobook

Demonologia : or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predestination, predictions, quackery, relics, saints, second sight, signs before death, sorcery, spirits, salamanders, spells, talismans, traditions, trials, &c. witches, witchcraft, &c. &c. the whole unfolding many singular phenomena in the page of nature

Demonologia : or, natural knowledge revealed; being an exposé of ancient and modern superstitions, credulity, fanaticism, enthusiasm, & imposture, as connected with the doctrine, caballa, and jargon, of amulets, apparitions, astrology, charms, demonology, devils, divination, dreams, deuteroscopia, effluvia, fatalism, fate, friars, ghosts, gipsies, hell, hypocrites, incantations, inquisition, jugglers, legends, magic, magicians, miracles, monks, nymphs, oracles, physiognomy, purgatory, predestination, predictions, quackery, relics, saints, second sight, signs before death, sorcery, spirits, salamanders, spells, talismans, traditions, trials, &c. witches, witchcraft, &c. &c. the whole unfolding many singular phenomena in the page of nature

by J. S. Forsyth

About the author

J. S. Forsyth was a British author active in the 1820s and early 1830s. Surviving catalog and library records link his name to a varied body of work, including Demonologia; or, Natural Knowledge Revealed, The Natural and Medical Dieteticon, The Antiquary's Portfolio, and The First Lines of Botany.

What makes Forsyth interesting is the range of his interests. He wrote about superstition and demonology, but also about diet, plants, and historical curiosities, suggesting a writer shaped by the broad, curious, improvement-minded spirit of the early 19th century.

Very little clear biographical information about his life appears to be readily available in standard reference sources, so he is known today mainly through his books rather than through a well-documented personal story. Even so, his work offers a vivid glimpse of a period when science, folklore, medicine, and popular belief were still being argued over side by side.