William Fox, Martha Gurney, and Radical Discourse of the 1790s

Between 1791 and 1794, William Fox, a Dissenter, collaborated with the Baptist bookseller Martha Gurney in publishing sixteen political pamphlets on topics ranging from the abolition of the slave trade to the perversion of national fast days to Pitt's provocative war with France. Fox's first pamphlet, An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Refraining from the Use of West India Sugar and Rum (1791), became the most widely distributed pamphlet of the eighteenth century. It solidified the abolitionist forces in Great Britain and America by focusing their energies on a boycott of West Indian produce. Though scholars have recognized the historical significance of An Address to the People of Great Britain, Fox has never received proper credit as the author. Neither has Martha Gurney been recognized for her achievement as London's leading female Dissenting printer/bookseller during the 1780s and '90s.