Articles and Publications

Several recent studies concern Quaker women of the seventeenth century: Women, Gender, and Radical Religion in Early Modern Europe, edited by Sylvia Brown (Boston: Brill, 2007) includes four essays on seventeenth and eighteenth century Quakers: Kirilka Stavreva, “Prophetic Cries at Whitehall: The Gender Dynamics of Early Quaker Women’s Injurious Speech”; Sylvia Brown, “The Radical Travels of Mary Fisher: Walking and Writing in the Universal Light”; Stephen A. Kent, “Seven Thousand ‘Hand-Maids and Daughters of the Lord’: Lincolnshire and Cheshire Quaker Women’s Anti-Tithe Protests in Late Interregnum and Restoration England”; and Sheila Wright, “‘Truly Dear Hearts’: Family and Spirituality in Quaker Women’s Writings, 1680–1750.” Michael Lawrence Birkel, The Messenger That Goes Before: Reading Margaret Fell for Spiritual Nurture (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill Publications, 2008) provides an introduction to the letters of Margaret Fell Fox for the modern reader.

Richard S. Harrison, A Biographical Dictionary of Irish Quakers (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008) revises and expands the edition first published in 1997. William K. Sessions, Early Quaker Printing (York [England]: Sessions Book Trust, 2006) is a brief (6 page) survey of seventeenth-century British Quaker publishing.

The theological writings of early British Quaker women are the subject of Carol Wayne White, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679), Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008) and Yasuharu Nakano, “Elizabeth Bathurst’s Soteriology and a List of Corrections in Several Editions of her Works,” Quaker Studies 13.1 (Sept. 2008), 89–102.

Erin Bell, “Eighteenth-Century Quakerism and the Rehabilitation of James Nayler, Seventeenth-Century Radical,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59.3 (2008), 426–446, examines the revision of Nayler's life by a later generation of Quakers, and the selective compilation of Nayler’s Works in 1716. Benjamin Furly, 1646–1714: A Quaker Merchant and His Milieu, edited by Sarah Hutton (Firenze [Italy]: L.S. Olschki, 2007), contains essays and documents about Furley, an English Quaker merchant living in Holland, including his defense of John Perrot. The “1646” date in the title appears to be in error, as other sources give his birth date as 1636.

Quaker language and rhetoric are the subject of several new works: Richard Bauman, “Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers” in A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication: Essential Readings, edited by Leila Monaghan and Jane E. Goodman (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2007) 63–76; Linda J. Webster, “Among Friends: Establishing an Oratorical Tradition among Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Era,” in Rhetoric, Religion, and the Roots of Identity in British Colonial America, edited by James R. Andrews (Volume 1 of A Rhetorical History of the United States) (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 2007, 197–228); and Michael P. Graves, “‘Thou Art But a Youth’: Thomas Chalkley Enacts and Defends the Early Quaker Impromptu Sermon,” also in Rhetoric, Religion, and the Roots of Identity in British Colonial America, 229–274, which examines a 1698 sermon by American Quaker Thomas Chalkley (1675–1741) as well as writings by Quakers Rebecca Smith, Robert Barclay and Samuel Bownas.

Arthur H. Williamson, “Apocalyptic Conscience in Crisis: Quakers, Jews, and Other Subversives,” in Apocalypse Then: Prophecy and the Making of the Modern World (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2008) 187–230, connects Quaker millenarianism of the English Civil War period with Jewish thought. Carole Dale Spencer, Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism: An Historical Analysis of the Theology of Holiness in the Quaker Tradition (Milton Keynes, Bucks, UK; Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2007) examines Quaker holiness from George Fox to the present, comparing Quaker and other Christian religious traditions. America’s Spiritual Utopias: the Quest for Heaven on Earth (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2008) by David Yount includes a chapter on “The Quakers: the Power of Friendly Persuasion,” 29–42.

Louise Bashford and Lucy Sibun, “Excavations at the Quaker Burial Ground, Kingston-upon-Thames, London,” Post-Medieval Archaeology, 41.1 (June 2007), 100–154, examines burial practices of Quakers, based on the remains of 360 individuals buried between 1664 and 1814, and on historical documents.

Two new studies consider questions of gender and...