Description
Book SynopsisOn Black Bartholomew's DayAugust 24, 1662nearly two thousand ministers denied the authority of the Church of England and were subsequently removed from their posts. Mary Franklin was the wife of Presbyterian minister Robert Franklin, one of the dissenting ministers ejected from their pulpits and their livings on that day. She recorded the experience of her persecution in the unused pages of her husband's sermon notebook. In 1782some hundred years after the composition of her grandmother's narrative Mary's granddaughter, Hannah Burton, took up this same notebook to chronicle her experience as an impoverished widow, barely surviving the economic revolutions of eighteenth-century London. Collected for the first time, this volume of the Franklin Family Papers offers rare insight into the personal lives of three generations of dissenting women.
Trade Review"Camden has created a magnificent toolkit for further investigations as well as a stellar example to whet the appetites of the more casual reader of life writing across generations, from grandmother to granddaughter, from circa 1688–9 to nearly a century later. . . .Camden delivers an exciting new case study for teaching and research alike. . . . This volume shines new light on women’s leadership roles in Dissenting communities with a first-person account of a wife of an ejected minister." * Bunyan Studies *
“This welcome addition to The Other Voice series is the first-ever edition of the autobiographical papers of Mary Franklin and of her granddaughter, Hannah Burton. These remarkable records, exceptions to the dearth of archival evidence for the lives of early-modern nonconformist women, are of primary importance for women’s history, religious history, literary history, and the history of subjectivity. In her comprehensive introduction, Vera Camden draws out this significance, setting the texts in their historical context and addressing their material nature, composition, genres, analogues, and models. Deft and crisply informative annotation completes a work of first-rate scholarship.” -- N.H. Keeble, Professor Emeritus of English Studies, University of Stirling
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Illustrations
Abbreviations
Introduction
Mary Franklin (d. 1711)
The Notebook of Mary Franklin (ca. 1685)
The Experience of Mary Franklin (ca. 1689–90)
The Prison Correspondence of Mary and Robert Franklin (1670)
The Last Will and Testament of Mary Franklin (1709, probated 1711)
Hannah Burton (1723–1786)
The Diary of Hannah Burton (1782)
Appendix 1: The Funeral Sermon for Mary Franklin
The Dissolution of the Earthly House of this Tabernacle (1713)
Appendix 2: Letters
The Letters of Ralph Snow (1691)
The Letter of William Bailey to Joshua Wilson (1817)
Appendix 3: Probated Wills
The Last Will and Testament of Walter Boddington (1734, probated 1736)
The Last Will and Testament of William Burton (1777, probated 1781)
Bibliography
Index
