Deborah Harkness: A Discovery of Witches

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.8 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1994, Deborah Harkness was doing research at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library when she stumbled across the Book of Soyga, a long-lost manuscript treatise on magic that once belonged to Elizabethan scientist and occult philosopher John Dee. About fourteen years later, she had an idea for a story: a historian—who turns out to be a witch—discovers a lost and much-coveted manuscript that thrusts her into a world of vampires, demons, and magic. Harkness’s idea became A Discovery of Witches, the first book of her All Souls Trilogy. The novel is now a television series starring Teresa Palmer and Matthew Goode. The show comes to AMC and BBC America on April 7. We asked Harkness to join us on Shakespeare Unlimited to talk about how her research influenced her fiction writing and to tell us about how witches, demons, and the supernatural were perceived in Shakespeare’s England. Dr. Deborah Harkness is a teaching professor of history at the University of Southern California. She is the author of John Dee’s Conversations with Angels and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution, as well as the All Souls Trilogy, originally published by Viking Press for Penguin Books. Harkness is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published March 19, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Excellent Witchcraft” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Shawn Corey Campbell and Bianca Ramirez at KPCC Public Radio in Pasadena, California.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, so a witch and a historian walk into a library. No, it's not a joke. Stick with me.
0:12.0	From the Folger's Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.
0:23.3	Actually, what I said a second ago is the plot point that kicks off a runaway series of best-selling novels that are now getting their
0:28.5	world premiere as a TV series. The All Souls trilogy follows Diana Bishop, a historian at Yale
0:36.1	who has been hiding the fact that she is actually a witch.
0:40.4	The All Souls trilogy was written by an old friend of the Folger, Deborah Harkness,
0:45.8	who's been doing research here since her days as a graduate student.
0:49.7	See, Deborah Harkness is not your standard historical fantasy novelist.
0:55.0	She's a PhD teaching professor of history at the University of Southern California,
1:01.0	who, in addition to her trilogy, has also written two books on science and magic in the early modern period.
1:08.0	And it's her understanding of real people, like John D., Elizabeth I's astrologer,
1:15.1	that makes her novels so rich.
1:17.8	We had Deb into the studio recently to talk about all of this for a podcast we call
1:23.0	Excellent Witchcraft.
1:25.7	Deborah Harkness is interviewed by Barbara Bogue.
1:28.7	Now, you start your book with this incident that actually happened to you in real life, I've read.
1:35.5	And in the book, at least, a witch, your protagonist, Diana Bishop, she finds a lost manuscript at the Bodleian Library. And this manuscript magically opens, and it's readable but only for her. And it promises to hold the key to just the origin of all magical creatures and kind of all of life. It seems sounds like. Anyway, this discovery tracks the attention of other supernatural creatures who've been searching
2:01.7	for it, and you're often running with the book. So, of course, your story, I assume, doesn't
2:09.0	involve actual magic or anything supernatural. But why don't you tell us what happened when you
2:14.9	discovered this book of Soiga? The Book of Soigua. Basically, what happened, you discovered this book of Soigua? The Book of Soiga. Basically what happened,
2:20.9	of course, is that it took a lot longer than it did in the book. When I wrote my first draft
2:26.1	of the discovery of witches, it took her forever to find the forbidden book, I think like 120 pages.
	...

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