This collection features eight pamphlets penned by co-founder of the Society of Friends and prolific writer, the indomitable Margaret Fell (1614–1702). It is high time that even a small part of Fell's substantial catalogue be made accessible to scholars, students, and general readers via modernized spelling, helpful footnotes, and an introduction that illuminates her contributions to early Quakerism and early modern literature. Heretofore, engagement with Fell's politics and theology have been largely limited to her most anthologized and subsequently most read pamphlet, Women's Speaking Justified (1666–67), which may result in the mistaken presumption that her rigorous defense of women's right to preach was her singular contribution to the Quaker cause and contemporary politico-religious discourse. While Women's Speaking Justified is remarkable, the genius of this collection lies in the editors’ choice to place this most accessible of all Fell's pamphlets toward the end, a choice that emphasizes how Fell's consciousness of contemporary gender politics, biblical erudition, religious zeal, and imposing intellect come together to create a forceful rhetorical style threaded throughout her writings.

Reading beyond Women's Speaking Justified displays a confident woman undaunted by religious persecution and the cultural hegemony of patriarchal oppression. For example, The Examination of Margaret Fell (1663/4) follows the popular Protestant convention wherein the accused demonstrates superior biblical knowledge than her persecutors, but Fell also illustrates a robust knowledge of English law. Fell's reasoned argument and legitimate legal complaint that she was not shown the document ordering her seizure and imprisonment, coupled with the judge's exasperated tone when addressing her, challenges contemporary constructions of women as irrational and intellectually inferior to men. Likewise, epistles like A Letter Sent to the King (1666) and Fell's autobiographical pamphlet A Relation of Margaret Fell, Her Birth, Life, Testimony, and Sufferings for the Lord's Everlasting Truth (1690) illustrate her very public position as champion for the right to liberty of conscience, sufferer for her faith, and active advocate on behalf of imprisoned Friends. Whether it is in earlier epistles such as To All the Professors of the World (1656) and A Testimony of the Touchstone (1656), or her final, intensely prophetic pamphlet, The Daughter of Zion Awakened (1677), this collection showcases Fell's consistent reliance on biblical images of women engaged in gendered domestic tasks like sweeping or baking as well as popular tropes of Christ as bridegroom or the church as a woman to craft her proclamations about Christ's presence within the hearts of his believers and the equality of women and men in Christ's eyes. It is perhaps this attentiveness to gender in Fell's work that makes her so compelling to read now, amidst Me Too and Time's Up revelations exposing the continued interconnectedness of gender and power.

The collection's arrangement reveals Fell to be a dynamic author comfortable writing across genres while also showcasing the flexibility of the epistle form. In every pamphlet, she demonstrates sensitivity to diverse audiences and considerable rhetorical sophistication. When, for example, she argues that Jews should convert to Quakerism in A Loving Salutation to the Seed of Abraham among the Jews (1656), she relies primarily on Hebrew scriptures and dexterously avoids the figure of Christ, even though Quaker belief is profoundly Christocentric. This awareness of audience is startling given that Fell was a central contributor to the Quaker doctrine that Christ's Second Coming was underway. All of her writings expound the belief that Christ had returned to live in the hearts of believers who could access “the ingrafted Word of God” within (To All the Professors, 81). It is astonishing that a woman so committed to a Christocentric faith would adjust her language, even having A Loving Salutation translated into Hebrew, for better audience appeal while also skillfully articulating the core tenets of Quakerism.

Reading Margaret Fell more broadly is deeply rewarding, chiefly because of Jane Donawerth and Rebecca M. Lush's engaging introduction elucidating Margaret Fell's dynamic theory of active reading, propensity for commonplacing, cross-referencing, summarizing scripture from memory, and their compelling evidence that Fell worked from bibles ranging from the Tyndale to the KJV. If the editors hoped that this collection might encourage further study of Margaret Fell and also “enlarge readers’ views of women writers from the seventeenth century” (52), I believe they have succeeded.