Naomi Baker
@drnaomibaker.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Manchester| General Editor, Literature & Theology 📚Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century (2025) https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/voices-of-thunder
Today I discovered that a letter attributed to a man was actually written by Ann Bathurst, the 17th-century visionary woman I’m researching. 🤩 Archival work might be slow and painstaking but it’s totally thrilling to be going in search of lost voices from the past and finding them! 📚
On this day in 1679, Ann Bathurst was just getting going with her diary. She was already having transcendent visions - today she felt “a sweet breathing flame” ✍🏻 Image from MS Mun.A.7.64 @chethamslibrary.bsky.social
Just so sick of male violence against women. That’s it.
It’s brilliant to get my hands on this beauty at last! Proud to have chapter on ugliness in this great collection @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social #beauty #earlymodern #gender #shakespeare
Blackbird’s nest in garden - in just over 2 weeks from eggs to little birds
In December 1680 there was a harmony of harping, and this has improved my day immeasurably
“Assumptions about the intrinsically ‘backward’ character of premodern religion not only leave the women of the past opaque to us but make the oppressions of our own time harder to see, too.” —an interview with Erin Maglaque
Spirit in the Sky | Erin Maglaque, Chandler Fritz
What do Italian astronomers, cloistered nuns, levitating saints, and the “sexy dreams” of desert church fathers have in common? In the pages of the
nybooks.com
Being reviewed by Stefan Collini is not for the faint-hearted, but I can hardly complain about this one drb.ie/article/havi...
Having a Reputation - Dublin Review of Books
A new biography of James Bryce, one time Chief Secretary of Ireland and supporter of Irish Home Rule, reveals the astonishingly varied and accomplished life of a long forgotten ‘greatest living Englis...
drb.ie
For the last day of #womenshistorymonth, a reminder that literary history, like other forms of history, has blind spots. Women - often “ordinary” women - wrote some of the most innovative works of the 17th century, including prophecies and visionary forms of prose. They’re worth reading! 📚
Gorgeous flourishes in a woman’s spiritual diary (late 17th century) - the letters seem to take off and dance across the page #earlymodern
In an altogether excellent list of imp names, Griezzell Greedigutt is a particular standout Image from Hopkins, “The Discovery of Witches”, 1647 #earlymodern
This image is on the front of my book! How has it found its way onto a card? 👀
Murray Gove@earlymodernmurray.bsky.social · 4mo agoI never thought I’d see an early modern woodcut of women prophets on a ‘girls’ night out’ card.
A great interview with @erinmaglaque.bsky.social where she draws attention to the incredible Anne Wentworth (one of the stars of Voices of Thunder)
The New York Review of Books@nybooks.com · 4mo ago“We lose something important about being human if AI becomes our primary contact with the unknown, our primary experience of the inexplicable.” —an interview with Erin Maglaque
A great interview with @erinmaglaque.bsky.social where she draws attention to the incredible Anne Wentworth (one of the stars of Voices of Thunder)
The New York Review of Books@nybooks.com · 4mo ago“We lose something important about being human if AI becomes our primary contact with the unknown, our primary experience of the inexplicable.” —an interview with Erin Maglaque
The Church of England may at last be recognising a female leader but it has taken far too long to do so - women were preaching as far back as the 1640s - and were vilified in the strongest terms within the established church #earlymodern
“Radical spiritual writing—prophecies, autobiographies, spiritual accounts—was a genre in which women [in the 17th-century] flourished: they wrote about childbirth, about raising and feeding children, about abusive marriages.” —@erinmaglaque.bsky.social
God’s Impertinent Prophets | Erin Maglaque
A new history brings to light the dissenting women who wrote, preached, and testified during England’s tumultuous seventeenth century, claiming the standing to speak as excluded outsiders who had un u...
nybooks.com
As the Church of England gets ready to install a female Archbishop of Canterbury, I’m thinking of all the women - going back 400 years and more - who were excluded, mocked and hounded for daring to preach. As this tract from 1641 shows, they were vilified as Satanic (as were “unqualified” men, too)
“When the Quaker women stood doused in blood at St. Paul’s, they made a sensational, ominous scene; but then, seventeenth-century Londoners were used to that.” — @erinmaglaque.bsky.social
God’s Impertinent Prophets | Erin Maglaque
A new history brings to light the dissenting women who wrote, preached, and testified during England’s tumultuous seventeenth century, claiming the standing to speak as excluded outsiders who had un u...
nybooks.com
Richard Roach, writing in 1725 about the great female authors and spiritual leaders of his era. He assumed that when the history books were written they would all be put on the public stage “with applause and admiration”. 300 yrs later and we’re only just learning their names #earlymodern
“Radical spiritual writing—prophecies, autobiographies, spiritual accounts—was a genre in which women [in the 17th-century] flourished: they wrote about childbirth, about raising and feeding children, about abusive marriages.” —@erinmaglaque.bsky.social
God’s Impertinent Prophets | Erin Maglaque
A new history brings to light the dissenting women who wrote, preached, and testified during England’s tumultuous seventeenth century, claiming the standing to speak as excluded outsiders who had un u...
nybooks.com
17th-century version of clickbait?! Opening page of Ann Bathurst’s spiritual diary, late C17th #earlymodern
“When the Quaker women stood doused in blood at St. Paul’s, they made a sensational, ominous scene; but then, seventeenth-century Londoners were used to that.” — @erinmaglaque.bsky.social
God’s Impertinent Prophets | Erin Maglaque
A new history brings to light the dissenting women who wrote, preached, and testified during England’s tumultuous seventeenth century, claiming the standing to speak as excluded outsiders who had un u...
nybooks.com
Manchester on Tuesday: please sign up if you can come events.manchester.ac.uk/event/event:...
Liberalism, Democracy and Public Opinion: Intellectual Histories | Events at The University of Manchester
Discussant: Emily Jones (History, University of Manchester) – author of the forthcoming The Disraeli Myth: The Making of a Conservative Tradition (Princeton UP, 2026)
events.manchester.ac.uk
