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She Being Dead Yet Speaketh: The Franklin Family Papers

On Black Bartholomew’s Day—August 24, 1662—nearly 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 1782—some 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.

“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

VERA J. CAMDEN is professor of English at Kent State University, training and supervising analyst at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center, and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University. She is associate editor of American Imago and American editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.

REVIEWS
Bunyan Studies: A Journal of Reformation and Nonconformist Culture 25 (2021): 123–27. Reviewed by Kathleen Lynch.
Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 17.1 (Fall 2022): 195–199. Reviewed by Mihoko Suzuki.
Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 44.4 (2021): 274–276. Reviewed by Leah Knight.
The Sixteenth Century Journal 53.4 (2022): 1121–1123. Reviewed by Heidi Olson Campbell.

INTERVIEW
"Mary Franklin and Hannah Burton, 'She Being Dead Yet Speaketh: The Franklin Family Papers.' An Interview with Vera J. Camden," May 26, 2022, New Books Network, New Books in Women's History. Interviewed by Deidre Tyler, podcast, 39:45, https://newbooksnetwork.com/mary-franklin-and-hannah-burton

 

On Black Bartholomew’s Day—August 24, 1662—nearly 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 1782—some hundred years after the composition of her grandmother’s narrative— Mary’s granddaughter, Hannah Burton, took up this same notebook to chronicle...

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book Details

  • Page Count:

    349 pages

  • Publication Year:

    2020

  • Publisher:

    Iter Press and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
  • Series:

    • The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series 71
    • Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 565

Ebook

USD$ 59.95 ISBN 978-0-86698-756-1 Order Ebook

Print

USD$ 59.95 ISBN 978-0-86698-623-6 Order Print Book

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