Now well established, The Other Voice series, published by Iter Press and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, continues to assist scholars in reshaping the early modern canon by providing a platform for diverse female voices. There is perhaps no more appropriate place for an anthology of seventeenth-century Quaker women's writings. As Feroli and Thickstun note, early in their careful and thorough introduction, Quaker women spoke as part of an “early countercultural movement” (3) that aimed to question such pressing matters as “liberty of conscience, separation of church and state, and social justice” (2), and while the Quaker movement was broadly accepting of women as men's spiritual equals, the texts included in this volume demonstrate a wide range of rhetorical techniques required to defend women's voices, in particular. (Comparisons are made between Priscilla Cotton and Mary Cole's oft-cited defense of female speech, To the Priests and People of England [1655], Anne Audland's A True Declaration [1655], and many more.) A forthcoming volume in the series, containing Margaret Fell's writings, means that Fell is not included in this edition. However, anyone interested in seventeenth-century literature and culture, the history of women's writing and activism, or in the Quakers more generally, will find an extraordinary range of materials here. Feroli and Thickstun's thirty-one-page introduction sets the forty Quaker-authored texts in their political, religious, and social contexts; indeed, students of seventeenth-century religious change would struggle to find a more careful and approachable introduction to the period and its influence on the development of the Quaker movement. Key critical and contextual sources for wider reading are indicated in footnotes and in the work's extensive bibliography, and the reader is elegantly introduced to Quaker parlance (“inner light,” “friend,” “convince”) through an engaging chronological account of the movement's growth and practices. Each text receives its own well-designed one-to-two-page headnote, containing biographical and contextual information, as well as highlighting the main arguments of the text and connections with other writers in the volume.

The forty edited texts (sometimes extracted but mostly presented in their entirety) are remarkable both for their similarities—enhanced by anthologization, of which one feels the Quakers writers would have approved—but also for the range of styles exhibited and the diversity of the writers and their situations. For instance, while it is well known that Quaker women wrote narratives of conviction and suffering, addresses and petitions to those in authority, and tracts on Quaker doctrine and practice (all of which are well represented here), less remarked upon forms are also present: “On the Sight of a Skull,” a devotional lyric poem by Mary Mollineux (1669, published 1702), once imprisoned in Lancaster prison for her faith, is reproduced here and compared briefly with Donne's Holy Sonnet 10, “Death be not proud” (84–86). The common Quaker practice of joint and collective authorship is also well represented (with both other women and men). The editors have organized the texts under two main headings: “Prophecy” (divided further into “Proclaiming the Inner Light,” “Directives to Political and Religious Authorities,” “Warnings,” and “Sufferings”) and “Late Seventeenth-Century Quietism and Organization” (comprising “Reason and Reflection” and “Women's Meetings”). The resulting structure allows readers to follow the changing preoccupations of the movement (and of women's place within it), while also noting that some concerns remained acute (e.g., the “Sufferings” narratives range from 1655 to 1691).

There are obvious benefits to reproducing, introducing, and annotating works, some of which are not available through Early English Books Online (e.g., Priscilla Cotton's As I Was in the Prison-House [1655]), or where the editors have checked EEBO copies against those not available on the platform. Annotations on the works themselves are extremely useful, especially in helping readers to negotiate biblical allusions, and editorial decisions are clearly set out. The edition's real value, however, is in its visual demonstration of the collective nature and joint force of Quaker women's writing, while maintaining a focus on its individual nuance and variety.