The Worst Witch (1998 TV series)
The series stars Georgina Sherrington and Felicity Jones (as Mildred Hubble and Ethel Hallow respectively), and was broadcast from 1998 to 2001 on ITV, and later on HBO. The series also stars veteran British actress Una Stubbs as the eccentric chanting teacher, Miss Bat. Felicity Jones was replaced by Katy Allen after the first series, it was explained away as a magical makeover (a "witch-over"). New characters were also added, such as Frank Blossom (the school's caretaker), Miss Crotchet, the music teacher in the third series who replaced Miss Bat and two students from ethnic minorities – Ruby Cherrytree and Jadu Wali. New recurring characters included Merlin Langstaff, a wizard apprentice who befriended Mildred, his two mean-spirited acquaintances – Barry "Baz" Dragonsbane and Gary "Gaz" Grailquest, Charlie, Frank Blossom's nephew who really wanted to be a wizard, Mrs. Cosie, the nervous owner of the nearby tearoom and Mistress Hecketty Broomhead, the evil school inspector who later became a brief headmistress. Also as a character who appears more than once is Egbert Hellibore, chief wizard and headmaster of Camelot Castle, where Merlin, Charlie, Baz and Gaz live. The first series dramatised "The Worst Witch" and "The Worst Witch Strikes Again", and the second series dramatised "A Bad Spell For The Worst Witch" and "The Worst Witch All At Sea". Both of these two series also contained original stories. The third and final series continued with purely original material.
Lois the Witch
The 1861 book's five stories are "Lois the Witch" (124 pages), "The Grey Woman" (78 pages), "The Doom of the Griffiths" (52 pages), "The Half-Brothers" (20 pages), and "The Crooked Branch" (63 pages). "Lois the Witch" is a long short story or novella of historical fiction, which first appeared in 3 parts in October 1859 in the weekly "All the Year Round" edited by Charles Dickens. The story's protagonist Lois Barclay is raised in a parsonage in Barford, Warwickshire but as she becomes a young woman both her parents die. In 1691 she crosses the Atlantic to live with her uncle and his family in Salem, Massachusetts and then becomes involved in the Salem witch trials. The book's second-longest story "The Grey Woman" is a Gothic tale of a young woman who, with her lady's maid, escapes from the castle of her rich, but abusive, husband Monsieur de la Tourelle. The stories "The Doom of the Griffiths" and "The Half-Brothers" were published in the 1859 collection "Round the Sofa" after previous publication in periodicals. "The Crooked Branch" was first published as "The Ghost in the Garden Room" in the 1859 extra Christmas issue of "All the Year Round" as part of the "portmanteau" story "The Haunted House".