The Papers of William Penn, Vol. 5: William Penn's Published Writings: 1660-1726: An Interpretive Bibliography (review)

Book Reviews57 history" (The Later Periods of Quakerism, v. 1, 435). It is an excellent piece of scholarship when viewed from within the confines of Quaker history. But it will not occupy a major place among the growing body of historical and sociological scholarship that is seeking to interpret the religious enthusiasms of the 1820's within a broader social context. The book's strengths are narrative rather than analytical. Ingle is familiar with interpretive problems left unresolved by earlier scholars, but he has chosen not to attempt to resolve them. On one issue that has wider implications beyond Quakerism, Ingle notes that young people were particularly receptive to Elias Hicks's preaching. How can this be explained if Hicks is interpreted as harking back to a rural, premodern past? Were young Quakers afraid of their own future in Jacksonian America? Ingle has presented considerable evidence to support the notion that the Hicksites, or reformers, held a Janus-like view of their own age and of their place in it. He shows that the Hicksite movement lost its vitality in the years that followed the separation. "The reform impulse, the hope of a new order, simply evaporated" (p. 223). In noting these phenomena he has raised the questions and provided the tools that will occupy future scholarship. University of DelawareCarol Hoffecker The Papers of William Penn, Vol. 5: William Penn's Published Writings: 1660-1726: An Interpretive Bibliography. By Edwin B. Bronner and David Fraser. Phila.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. xxvi, 546 pp. Illus., index. $40.00 Scholars interested in William Penn, early Quakerism, seventeenth and early eighteenth-century English and American religious and political history, and English printing have cause to celebrate the publication of this interpretive bibliography. Bronner and Fraser have tried to identify all of the published works of Penn as well as those to which he contributed, and to provide publishing details for each as well as a summary of its context and contents. In addition, Bronner has provided an essay on Penn's characteristics as an author and a categorization of his writings, and Fraser has written an essay on the seventeenth-century underground press in England and on the printers who published early Quaker works including those of Penn. Fraser's scholarly essay is especially noteworthy for its attribution of many of Penn's works to particular printers largely on the basis of typographical comparisons with other works by these printers. The most remarkable aspects of this monumental publication are the painstaking identification and comparison of each slightly revised or new edition of each of Penn's one hundred and thirty-five published works; the careful attempt to determine which of the many anonymously or pseudonymously published works often attributed to Penn were actually his; and the detailed information on collation (size and form), text measure, bibliographic citations, copies examined, and contents (pagination and section headings). The editors have included a photocopy of the title page of each issue and edition of each work. The editors have provided a page or two of background and description for each publication. These brief essays are immensely helpful in giving readers information on the purpose of, and the circumstances calling forth, each work and a very careful prose summary of its contents. The only disappointing aspect of the William Penn's Published Writings is the limited scope of the interpretive 58Quaker History remarks, especially in the areas of religious and political history. For instance, it is mentioned in places that the work under consideration is in part a defense against the charge of Socinianism, but Socinianism is nowhere identified, and no comments are made about the reasons for or the validity of the charge. Possibly more analytical and less simply descriptive remarks would have stretched inappropriately the scope of this bibliographical volume. In any case, the authors provide references to specific sections of scholarly studies of Penn's works for readers who want to learn more. As Bronner has written, much of what Penn wrote "has been forgotten because it was hurriedly written, without proper reflection and review, it was frequently repetitious, and, as one author said, it was often 'turgid and obscure'" (p.26). Nevertheless...