The multi-faceted nature of dissenting verse is demonstrated, from the sonnets of the Quaker Martin Mason to the self-consciously 'witty' acrostic used to commemorate the Fifth Monarchist Vavasor Powell's death, to the Quaker schismatic John Perrot's 'A sea of the seed's sufferings'.

The multi-faceted nature of dissenting verse is demonstrated, from the sonnets of the Quaker Martin Mason to the self-consciously 'witty' acrostic used to commemorate the Fifth Monarchist Vavasor Powell's death, to the Quaker schismatic John Perrot's 'A sea of the seed's sufferings'.

The multi-faceted nature of dissenting verse is demonstrated, from the sonnets of the Quaker Martin Mason to the self-consciously 'witty' acrostic used to commemorate the Fifth Monarchist Vavasor Powell's death, to the Quaker schismatic John Perrot's 'A sea of the seed's sufferings'.

This landmark volume is the first in a century to examine the “Second Period” of Quakerism, a time when the Religious Society of Friends experienced upheavals in theology, authority and institutional structures, and political trajectories as a result of the persecution Quakers faced in the first decades of the movement’s existence. The authors and special contributors explore the early growth of Quakerism, assess important developments in Quaker faith and practice, and show how Friends coped with the challenges posed by external and internal threats in the final years of the Stuart age—not only in Europe and North America but also in locations such as the Caribbean. This groundbreaking collection sheds new light on a range of subjects, including the often tense relations between Quakers and the authorities, the role of female Friends during the Second Period, the effect of major industrial development on Quakerism, and comparisons between founder George Fox and the younger generation of Quakers, such as Robert Barclay, George Keith, and William Penn. Accessible, well-researched, and seamlessly comprehensive, The Quakers, 1656–1723 promises to reinvigorate a conversation largely ignored by scholarship over the last century and to become the definitive work on this important era in Quaker history. In addition to the authors, the contributors are Erin Bell, Raymond Brown, J. William Frost, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Robynne Rogers Healey, Alan P. F. Sell, and George Southcombe.

If terms are associated with particular historical periods, then ’polemic’ is firmly rooted within early modern print culture, the apparently inevitable result of religious controversy and the rise of print media. Taking a broad European approach, this collection brings together specialists on medieval as well as early modern culture in order to challenge stubborn assumptions that medieval culture was homogenous and characterized by consensus; and that literary discourse is by nature ’eirenic’. Instead, the volume shows more clearly the continuities and discontinuities, especially how medieval discourse on the sins of the tongue continued into early modern discussion; how popular and influential medieval genres such as sermons and hagiography dealt with potentially heterodox positions; and the role of literary, especially fictional, debate in developing modes of articulating discord, as well as demonstrating polemic in action in political and ecclesiastical debate. Within this historical context, the position of early modern debates as part of a more general culture of articulating discord becomes more clearly visible. The structure of the volume moves from an internal textual focus, where the nature of polemic can be debated, through a middle section where these concerns are also played out in social practice, to a more historical group investigating applied polemic. In this way a more nuanced view is provided of the meaning, role, and effect of ’polemic’ both broadly across time and space, and more narrowly within specific circumstances.

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume I traces the emergence of Anglophone Protestant Dissent in the post-Reformation era between the Act of Uniformity (1559) and the Act of Toleration (1689). It reassesses the relationship between establishment and Dissent, emphasising that Presbyterians and Congregationalists were serious contenders in the struggle for religious hegemony. Under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts, separatists were few in number, and Dissent was largely contained within the Church of England, as nonconformists sought to reform the national Church from within. During the English Revolution (1640-60), Puritan reformers seized control of the state but splintered into rival factions with competing programmes of ecclesiastical reform. Only after the Restoration, following the ejection of two thousand Puritan clergy from the Church, did most Puritans become Dissenters, often with great reluctance. Dissent was not the inevitable terminus of Puritanism, but the contingent and unintended consequence of the Puritan drive for further reformation. The story of Dissent is thus bound up with the contest for the established Church, not simply a heroic tale of persecuted minorities contending for religious toleration. Nevertheless, in the half century after 1640, religious pluralism became a fact of English life, as denominations formed and toleration was widely advocated. The volume explores how Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers began to forge distinct identities as the four major denominational traditions of English Dissent. It tracks the proliferation of Anglophone Protestant Dissent beyond England--in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Dutch Republic, New England, Pennsylvania, and the Caribbean. And it presents the latest research on the culture of Dissenting congregations, including their relations with the parish, their worship, preaching, gender relations, and lay experience.

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 2 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 1 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.

Eighteenth century Britain thought of itself as a polite, sentimental, enlightened place, but often its literature belied this self-image. This was an age of satire, and the century's novels, poems, plays, and prints resound with mockery and laughter, with cruelty and wit. The street-level invective of Grub Street pamphleteers is full of satire, and the same accents of raillery echo through the high scepticism of the period's philosophers and poets, many of whom were part-time pamphleteers themselves. The novel, a genre that emerged during the eighteenth century, was from the beginning shot through with satirical colours borrowed from popular romances and scandal sheets. This Handbook is a guide to the different kinds of satire written in English during the 'long' eighteenth century. It focuses on texts that appeared between the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Outlier chapters extend the story back to first decade of the seventeenth century, and forward to the second decade of the nineteenth. The scope of the volume is not confined by genre, however. So prevalent was the satirical mode in writing of the age that this book serves as a broad and characteristic survey of its literature. The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire reflects developments in historical criticism of eighteenth-century writing over the last two decades, and provides a forum in which the widening diversity of literary, intellectual, and socio-historical approaches to the period's texts can come together.

The Spiritual Lives and Manuscript Cultures of Eighteenth-Century English Women explores the vital and unexplored ways in which women's life writings acted to undergird, guide, and indeed shape religious communities. Through an exploration of various significant but understudied personal relationships- including mentorship by older women, spiritual friendship, and care for nonbiological children-the book demonstrates the multiple ways in which women were active in writing religious communities. The women discussed here belonged to communities that habitually communicated through personal writing. At the same time, their acts of writing were creative acts, powerful to build and shape religious communities: these women wrote religious community. The book consists of a series of interweaving case studies and focuses on Catherine Talbot (1721-70), Anne Steele (1717-78), and Ann Bolton (1743-1822), and on their literary interactions with friends and family. Considered together, these subjects and sources allow comparison across denomination, for Talbot was Anglican, Steele a Baptist, and Bolton a Methodist. Further, it considers women's life writings as spiritual legacy, as manuscripts were preserved by female friends and family members and continued to function in religious communities after the death of their authors. Various strands of enquiry weave through the book: questions of gender and religion, themselves inflected by denomination; themes related to life writings and manuscript cultures; and the interplay between the writer as individual and her relationships and communal affiliations. The result is a variegated and highly textured account of eighteenth-century women's spiritual and writing lives.