Richard Baxter was one of the most prolific and politically engaged religious writers in mid- to late seventeenth-century England. To date, however, it has been difficult to trace and identify his various engagements, via manuscript and print publication, with the intellectual networks that transformed the public sphere in Britain and Europe during this period. This situation resulted, in part, from Baxter's refusal to conform to the re-established state Church following Charles ii’s restoration, but it is also a consequence of the complex ways in which his manuscript papers were posthumously archived and catalogued. Baxter's extensive correspondence, in manuscript and print, was made accessible and searchable through N. H. Keeble and Geoffrey Nuttall's two-volume Calendar (Oxford 1991). However, the Baxter treatises (also held at Dr Williams's Library) have not, until now, received similar attention. In this catalogue and guide, Alan Argent provides an overview of a key collection of archival materials that are absolutely essential to a proper understanding of the religious, political, literary and scientific cultures of early modern England and beyond. The focal point of the material is Baxter as a writer, negotiator, political agitator and Nonconformist. But Baxter's irrepressible curiosity, and horizontal and vertical networking (due to a genuine pastoral care for apprentices and students, as well as melancholic gentlewomen and noblemen facing governmental challenges), mean that the items included within this archive are eclectic, wide-ranging and unpredictable. Argent's catalogue and guide offers an important way into this material for researchers from a wide range of disciplines. The introduction explains how Dr Williams's Library acquired the material and prior endeavours to catalogue it; the work of W. H. Black and Roger Thomas remains a continual point of reference throughout the book. However, Argent offers a comprehensive and detailed overview of the complete contents of the Baxter treatises for the first time: this includes attention to the material form (size, binding, paper, manuscript hands), content (identifying links with Baxter's print publications, correspondence and broader political or religious networks) and current scholarly research. This volume will be a crucial reference point for researchers working on the British Atlantic and Europe during the seventeenth century; it also offers the potential to open up new interdisciplinary connections between the scientific, political and religious revolutions that made Baxter's own life such a significant point of transition.
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