Very intrigued by the description of this book. In college I wrote my history thesis on female Celtic saints, so I was hoping to see at least some mention of the saints I had written about (which have connections in paganism).

A lot of information was presented here. It was very obviously well researched and reviewed different aspects of female characters in history and how they have been viewed.

This is not the type of book to sit and read for fun with no evaluation - it is a text for study and concentration.

Ronald Hutton is one of those nonfiction authors who you can always trust to be thorough and (I think) impartial in their assessment of the evidence. In Queens of the Wild, he carefully weighs up various sources and takes you step by step through the birth of these various myths, how they have morphed and developed in the time since their earliest mentions. And in the end, you get a fascinating, in-depth and yet very readable book.

It definitely helps that I found the content in itself engrossing. I enjoyed seeing how the eponymous queens of the wild figures came to be as they are today, and particularly how some of them are less ancient than might be thought. It's very interesting to see how myths form and, especially, how they become popular myth, such as the Green Man, given as a final, additional example in this book.

Queens of the Wild is an excellent piece of nonfiction, both for people with a deeper knowledge of the topic and for those (like me!) who haven't read or thought much on it before. One I would highly recommend.

Thank you for a copy of this book! It describes the history of paganism over the past couple hundred years. It’s a very in-depth look at the subject matter and, like other reviewers have said, I’m not sure if people wanting a more general understanding of paganism would enjoy it as much. However, I found it very readable and it's filled with a lot of interesting knowledge. It talks about a lot of Queens and Goddesses, many of which I didn’t know anything about. I really liked seeing the ties to Christianity and how much research the author put into the book. Overall, I recommend this for people interested in this area, but it may not be the best for general reading about paganism.

This book is a very, very, in depth look at the narrative surrounding female figures of supposedly pagan origins. But although the subject matter deserves to be explored further, I could not help but feel conflicted by this offering. Hutton offers up four main archetypes for the reader’s perusal, yet it is done in such a way that the reader becomes overwhelmed and unable to follow the examples given. This reader in particular had to set down and take the book up again multiple times in order to finish, having to parse and process what had been consumed every few pages. In truth, this review was difficult to write as I had so wanted to enjoy the topic being explored. The information presented is overall worth a read, but perhaps for the truly dedicated and not a casual reader.

"Queen of the Wild" by Professor Ronald Hutton is packed full of research on possible pagan traditions and their ties to pre-christianity, While a lot of pagans like to view that certain holidays in Christianity were simply pulled from pagan rituals he shows in fact most, if not all, of them cannot be traced that far back. This book is definitely for someone who wishes to do deep study of how paganism developed over the last 300 years. He shows how Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic came about not as pagan goddesses but through the social elite or through common folklore.
There are lots of different books on paganism and witchcraft and most of these books hold up the premise of paganism was being "hidden" in Christianity. They posit that paganism can trace its roots all the way back to pre-christian roots. Professor Hutton shows us through his research that the four Queens of the Wild he focuses on are in fact mythology of 19th century writers. I completely enjoyed the book and the time he spent in researching the four Goddesses.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

In this book, the author, Professor of History at Bristol University, is focused primarily on the origins of four specific female figures from European folklore, looking at the evidence of how they came into existence. These are Mother Earth/Nature, the Fairy/Faerie Queen, Lady of the Night, and the Cailleach (the Old Woman of Celtic tradition). In the epilogue, he discusses the Green Man. In each case, he is interested in whether or not there is evidence for these figures being pagan goddesses, as is often asserted. He meticulously goes through the evidence for each figure and comes to the conclusion that they are not. The first two were creations of the cultural elite, introduced through literature. The last two were products of belief by ‘common’ people. He shows how the arguments about their origins evolved and spread, and the part played by academics. He makes a compelling case. He provides a good reminder about the limitations of archaeology when it comes to trying to decipher belief systems based on bits of material culture. When reading, I was reminded of an episode from my former life in academic anthropology (in the US, archaeology is housed in anthropology departments). I attended a presentation given by an archaeologist colleague who was working in an area in which nomadic people still lived. He spent time with them, not because he thought they would live the same way as people did long ago, but because he wanted some insight into how nomadic people lived. Being nomadic means the amount of stuff people have is limited, so kids don’t have a bunch of toys and played with rocks. He watched them piling upo the rocks and then leaving them when they were done playing. He realized that an archaeologist coming across something like that would make the case for the pile of rocks being part of a religious or other important ritual, not simply a result of children at play. Hutton is making the same kind of argument here. People with agendas seized on small points to make arguments that fit certain narratives. These arguments spread and were soon seen as fact.

The book is well written and very readable, in addition to being fascinating. I learned a lot.

Queens of the Wild is a really interesting read! There is so much information that I was not expecting to find. This book is obviously very well researched as well. Hutton discusses so many different Queens and Goddesses, and it was so interesting to see their origins and their adaptions.

This was such an interesting read that was really well researched without being too textbooky, It is super specific so if you wanted to read this as a more general read you may not enjoy it as much as I did but I found it really good. There were so many goddesses and queens within this book that I hadnt heard of and I loved it.

A highly interesting and scholarly volume focusing on the history of pagan goddesses, in particular Mother Earth, The Fairy Queen, The Lady of the Night, and the Cailleach (Old Woman). The author starts off by exploring the notion of pagan survival and what it means in the context of later medieval and Christian perspectives, before delving into the background and evolution of the four divine females, as gleaned through a study of literature and changing beliefs and traditions over the ages. This is a must-read for anyone interested in comparative religion, mythology, and folklore of the Western world, especially through a feminist lens. It would have been even more interesting to see a comparative study of these ancient Western goddesses in juxtaposition with ancient Eastern goddesses (e.g. incarnations of the Hindu divine mother like Durga and Kali), who are still very much a part of modern-day religion and traditions in India, unlike their Western counterparts! But of course, I understand that the book cannot be so vast in scope, and it does a superb job of covering an incredible amount of ground in great depth already.

This book wasn't quite what I was expecting. Although very informational, I found it wasn't written in the most accessible way for a wider audience. I can see it's benefit if you are acutely interested in this area, or wanting to read this for research purposes. I was hoping that this might be a bit more lyrically written rather than purely informational, but that's more on me than it is the author. Overall I did enjoy parts of this book, but I maintain that it is best read by those with a keen interest in this area, rather than those who have a fleeting interest like myself. I was drawn in by the beautiful cover and description of the book, but caution potential readers from expecting something easily accessible to everyone.

*ARC from Netgalley*

This is a really interesting work! The book`s about how pagan goddesses are perceived and adapted to the christian religions. The author goes back in time to medieval Europe to introduce the readers to the mentality and beliefs of that era, explaining how their tales and world perceptions have influenced on the Western World spiritualism.
The part that stood out for me the most is the chapter about the Fairy Queen and how she was created by the mentality of the people. Especially how their image of elves transformed into the concept of fairies and, consequently, into the Fairy Queen.
A must read if you're into history, mysticism and religion!

I was amazed by the research that went into this book, and I possibly should not have been, because the author is a professor of history, but I think it is brilliant and would highly recommend this study. It shows an academic attitude and I like that. Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for giving me a copy of the book