Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660. By MARCUS NEVITT.

Abstract

In this sophisticated study of pamphlet culture in the 1640s and 1650s Marcus Nevitt attempts to draw a more ‘gender-sensitive picture’ of pamphlet discourse in the period (p. 3). His contention is that whilst ‘pamphlets, and pamphlet culture more generally, have frequently been located amongst the most inclusive and democratic aspects of early modern English society’, these notions of inclusivity and democratization can conceal ‘the material and rhetorical barriers that women encountered when participating in revolutionary pamphlet culture’ (pp. 1, 5). Nevitt’s book is divided into five chapters and proceeds, sensibly, given the topic of pamphlet culture, by detailed case study. He considers the radical Katherine Chidley’s involvement in debates over religious toleration in the 1640s, then examines the pamphlet writings of Mary Pope and Elizabeth Poole following the regicide. Nevitt goes on to look at Elizabeth Alkin (‘Parliament Joan’) as he attempts to further our understanding of the role women played in the book trade and in the production of pamphlets and newsbooks. In the final two chapters Nevitt seeks to unpack the significance of the physical (and naked) protest of an anonymous woman at a church service and the contribution made by women to the Quaker campaign against tithes.