{"title":"Simon Leyland","description":"\u003cp\u003eSIMON LEYLAND is a British author, historian, and former City trader who exchanged financial markets for archives and libraries. His books include \u003cem\u003eWitch Please: A Cultural History of Women Who Wouldn't Behave\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eA Splendidly Smutty Dictionary of Sex\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThe Men Who Stare at Hens: Great Irish Eccentrics\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLeyland’s poetry has appeared in \u003cem\u003eVersal\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eSalzburg Poetry Review\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eMoth\u003c\/em\u003e magazine, and he has published poetry collections with Erbacce.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSimon lives on the west coast of Ireland, in Connemara.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSimon Leyland’s books are published by Turner Publishing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBrowse more: \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/books-new-releases\"\u003eNew Releases\u003c\/a\u003e · \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/award-winning-books\"\u003eAward-Winning Books\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"witch-please","title":"Witch, Please","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA witty, culturally engaged history of the witch as one of Western society’s most enduring and adaptable figures.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe witch has always functioned as a cultural screen onto which societies project their deepest anxieties about women, power, knowledge, sexuality, and autonomy. She emerges whenever female independence becomes unsettling, intelligible, or in need of explanation. She is simultaneously warning, scapegoat, fantasy, and mirror.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFar from being a straightforward story of spells, superstition, or folklore, \u003ci\u003eWitch, Please\u003c\/i\u003e takes you on a tour of the many women who have earned the title of Witch, from ancient healers revered for their knowledge to those burned at the stake to modern Etsy witches. Across literature, art, and eventually film and television, the witch repeatedly mutates between monster, crone, seductress, and comic relief, revealing more about each era’s assumptions than any stable “truth” about witchcraft itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese competing versions of the witch—radical, commercial, nostalgic, performative—sit uneasily alongside one another, underscoring the figure’s continued cultural volatility. But across these shifts, one argument remains constant: Societies create witches when they need them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c!-- bookshop-buylink --\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/book\/9798887983196\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003eshop for this title at Bookshop.org\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c!-- \/bookshop-buylink --\u003e","brand":"Simon Leyland","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":51957797650648,"sku":"9798887983202","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":51957797683416,"sku":"9798887983196","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0563\/7786\/8475\/files\/Witch_Please_FChigh_mockup_v2_1786980922_dd3822a7-a1d2-4428-ab67-071c24153e28.jpg?v=1791087568"}],"url":"https:\/\/turnerpublishing.com\/collections\/author-simon-leyland.oembed","provider":"Turner Publishing","version":"1.0","type":"link"}