New Critical Studies on Early Quaker Women, 1650-1800

There has never been an interdisciplinary collection of essays that focuses specifically on the women of the Quaker movement—their experiences and their voices, their bodies and their texts. This book, an essential addition to the studies of Quakerism, religion, and gender, offers groundbreaking archival research and analysis about women Friends that ranges from the movement’s British origins to early American revolutions. The fourteen contributors illuminate the issues and challenges early Quaker women faced, addressing such varied topics as the feminization of religion; dissent and identity; transatlantic scribal and print culture; abolitionism and race; and the perception of women Friends by anti-Quaker spectators. Divided into three sections entitled ‘Revolutions’, ‘Disruptions’, and ‘Networks’, this collection explores the subversive and dynamic ways that Quaker women resisted persecution, asserted autonomy, and forged barriers through creative networks. It enhances and expands the position of Quaker women in the early transatlantic world, accentuating their difference from other religious orthodoxies—across time, across cultures, and across continents.