Oscar Wilde described this as "Favorite romantic reading when a boy." Horror fans that we are, we can see why it was a Wilde favorite. Set in the Thirty Years War in what is now Germany, The Amber Witch claims to be a clergyman's manuscript found in an old church. It tells the tale of Maria Schweider, a clergyman's daughter who has been accused of witchcraft. Maria has a deposit of amber. Is this, the nobleman Wittich Appelman asks, the source of the power that has caused all the evil hereabouts? Maria is put on trial. The stake is prepared. A torch burns bright. But Maria and her lover know she is not the real witch. And so does the real witch!

Author Biography

Johannes Wilhelm Meinhold (1797 - 1851) was a Pomeranian priest, author, poet, playwright and novelist. Meinhold was born in Ltow on the island of Usedom, where his father Georg Wilhelm Meinhold (1767-1728) was a Lutheran priest. Growing up in the atmosphere of the Napoleonic Wars, he enrolled as a student at the University of Greifswald in Swedish Pomerania in the fall of 1813. After his theological education, he was priest in Koserow on Usedom from 1821 until 1827. For the next 17 years, he was priest in Krummin, also on Usedom, before he relocated to Farther Pomerania. He retired early on account of his insubordinate behavior and died in 1851 in Berlin-Charlottenburg