Conjure Wife: The 1943 Text

By Fritz Leiber

Norman Saylor is a successful sociology professor-rational, skeptical, and devoted to empirical truth. When he discovers his wife Tansy has been practicing witchcraft to protect him, he demands she stop and destroy her charms. But Tansy's magic was real, and with her protections gone, Norman finds himself targeted by forces that move through faculty politics and suburban rituals. To survive, he must accept what his rationalism denied: beneath the mundane surface of academic life, a hidden war is being waged-and the women have always held the real power.

Fritz Leiber's first novel, Conjure Wife remains one of the twentieth century's most important works of supernatural horror-a foundational text by a writer who influenced everyone from Michael Moorcock and Harlan Ellison to Kelly Link and George R.R. Martin.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GF23FLGD
• ISBN13: 9798994438701
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Frolic Press
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Eppur si muove "nevertheless, it moves."

Professor Saylor and his wife, Tansy, are newcomers to the university. Even though they are not made of the same conservative material as the others, they seem to be doing quite well. Professor Norman Saylor of the sociology department is the author of “Parallelism in Superstition and Neurosis.” He gets this irresistible urge to snoop around in Tansy’s personals and is surprised to find that she is a practitioner of the craft. He is not upset and only wants to help her free herself by burning all the paraphernalia (except her diary). It is not hard to guess what happens next. Yep, his life falls apart, and he is destined to be run over by a truck if other evil things do not get to him first. He finds that there are more evil forces at work (all female, of course), each with her own agenda. The real question is, does Norman ever get sucked up in the system or is he still convinced that it is just a coincidence? As with most movies that are an abbreviation of the book, the one made from his story has the same feel, “Night of the Eagle, aka Burn Witch Burn” (1962), with Peter Wyngarde as Norman and Janet Blair as Tansy.