Margaret Thickstun, the Jane Watson Irwin Professor of Literature, is the co-editor of a book on 17th-century writings of Quaker women. Witness, Warning, and Prophecy: Quaker Women’s Writing, 1655-1700 was published earlier this year by Iter and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies’ ACMRS Publications. The book includes 40 texts that are representative of the literary output of Quaker women in the late 17th century and is part of The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series. Teresa Feroli of New York University co-edited the volume.
According to the publisher, Witness, Warning, and Prophecy includes “examples of key Quaker literary genres—proclamations, directives, warnings, sufferings, testimonies, polemic, pleas for toleration—and showcase[s] a range of literary styles and voices, from eloquent poetry to legal analyses of English canon and civil law. In their varied responses to the core Quaker belief in the indwelling Spirit, these women left a rich literary legacy of an early countercultural movement.”
In a review, Elaine Hobby of Loughborough University, U.K., said the book contains “an extraordinary and fascinating range of materials” and that “the headnotes to the pieces are well designed, giving the kinds of contextual and other information that a reader might most need, and drawing on the best sources when providing those contexts.”
