Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Margaret Fell
-
Standard Name: Fell, Margaret
Birth Name: Margaret Askew
Married Name: Margaret Fell
Married Name: Margaret Fox
Pseudonym: M.F.
Indexed Name: Margaret Askew Fell Fox
MF
was the most prolific, as well as one of the most influential, Quaker
writers. She wrote letters; her single-volume collected works contained forty-five tracts, nearly all written in the 1650s and 1660s. They appeared either anonymously, or collaboratively, most frequently bearing her initials, or occasionally her name. Ranging in size from leaflets to volumes, they represent thirteen per cent of all publications by Quaker women between 1641 and 1700.
Kunze, Bonnelyn Young. Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism. Macmillan, 1994.
211, 131
Some are undated. One of MF
's printers was Mary Westwood
.
Bell, Maureen. A Dictionary of Women in the London Book Trade, 1540-1730. Loughborough University of Technology, 1983.
It is not known whether she belonged to the Church of England or some other sect before she joined the Society of Friends
(in earlier 1652, along with her employers).
Peters, Kate. Print Culture and the Early Quakers. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Intertextuality and Influence
Caryl Churchill
The play takes place in the period immediately following Charles I
's defeat by Cromwell
, when for a short time . . . anything seemed possible.
Churchill, Caryl. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire. Pluto Press, 1978.
John Wesley
responded by invoking what has later been called exceptionalism. He agreed that Mary Bosanquet had an Extraordinary Call, such as Saint Paul
himself had recognised when he permitted women to speak at Corinth...
Occupation
Mary Fisher
The six months that she and her woman companion spent in Barbados were fruitful. By their preaching and their behaviour they convinced (that is converted) many people, including John Rous
, son of a wealthy...
politics
Doreen Wallace
DW
's anti-tithing campaign put her in the tradition of seventeenth-century writers like Mary Cary
, Margaret Fell
, and innumerable others; but whereas they condemned the Church of England
for doctrinal reasons and in...
Author summary
Dorothy White
DW
was one of the most prolific of the seventeenth-century Quaker
women pamphleteers (with twenty texts), apart from the more famous Margaret Fell
(whose texts are on average longer than hers). She was an incisive...
Author summary
Rebecca Travers
RT
(with ten titles of her own, besides contributions to joint works) was said to be the most prolific Quaker pamphleteer, theologist, and polemicist of the Restoration period after Margaret Fell
.
Kunze, Bonnelyn Young. Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism. Macmillan, 1994.
131
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Textual Features
Anna Maria Hall
The novel is set in seventeenth-century England, during the time of Cromwell's protectorate.
Keane, Maureen. Mrs. S.C. Hall: A Literary Biography. Colin Smythe, 1997.
145
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Cromwell
, Lord Protector, appears as a character.
Hall, Anna Maria. The Buccaneer. R. Bentley, 1840.
66
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.
The Buccaneer, the son of a royalist clergyman and his young...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Hooton
Through the letters that she wrote from prison in 1652, and of which she kept archived copies, EH
helped (together with Margaret Fell
, who became keeping copies at the same time) to set what...
Textual Production
Anne Audland
AA
wrote to Margaret Fell
from Banbury calling her My dear and precious sister in whom my life is bound up . . . . My heart is open into thy bosom.
qtd. in
Mack, Phyllis. Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England. University of California Press, 1992.
153-4 and n68
Textual Production
Dorothy White
Following Priscilla Cotton
but preceding Margaret Fell
, DW
defended women's preaching in A Call from God Out of Egypt, by His Son Christ the Light of Life, which is partly in verse (a...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Ann Kelty
She had already issued, in 1840, Early Days in the Society of Friends: exemplifying the obedience of faith, in some of its first members, a work focussing on George Fox
. By primitive in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Maude Royden
The book opens with a chapter called The Universal Subordination of Women, which sets out MR
's contention that sexual inequality has been fundamental to the great civilisations known to history. A candid study...
Travel
Mary Penington
MP
travelled through Kent, past Gravesend to The Downs, with her husband
, her daughter Gulielma
or Gully, and Margaret Fox (formerly Fell)
, to see George Fox
off on a preaching voyage.
Fox...
Timeline
July 1659: A women's petition to parliament was headed...
Women writers item
July 1659
A women's petition to parliament was headed by the names of Margaret Fell
and her daughters and signed with 7,000 names.
Kunze, Bonnelyn Young. Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism. Macmillan, 1994.
xi
1694-1706: Quaker printer Tace Sowle produced three...
Writing climate item
1694-1706
Quaker
printer Tace Sowle
produced three volumes of the works of George Fox
(Quaker pioneer, husband of Margaret Fell
): his Journal, Epistles, and Gospel-Truth Demonstrated.
Bracken, James K., and Joel Silver, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 170. Gale Research, 1996.
254-5
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
Texts
Fell, Margaret. A Brief Collection of Remarkable Passages. J. Sowle, 1710.
Fell, Margaret. A Call to the Universall Seed of God. 1665.
Fell, Margaret. A Call unto the Seed of Israel. Robert Wilson, 1668.
Fell, Margaret. A Declaration and an Information. Thomas Simmons, 1660.
Fell, Margaret. A Loving Salutation to the Seed of Abraham among the Jewes. Thomas Simmons, 1656.
Fell, Margaret, and George, 1624 - 1691 Fox. A Paper Concerning Such as are made Ministers by the Will of Man. Printed for M. W., 1659.
Fell, Margaret. A Testimonie of the Touch-Stone for all Professions, and all Forms. Thomas Simmons, 1656.
Fell, Margaret. For Manasseth Ben Israel. Giles Calvert, 1656.
Fell, Margaret. The Citie of London Reprov’d. Robert Wilson, 1660.
Fell, Margaret. The Daughter of Sion Awakened. 1677.
Fell, Margaret. The Standard of the Lord Revealed. 1667.
Fell, Margaret. This was given to Major Generall Harrison and the rest. Thomas Simmons, 1660.
Fell, Margaret. “This was given to Major Generall Harrison and the rest, 1660”. Women Writers Online.
Fell, Margaret. To the General Councel, and Officers of the Army. Thomas Simmons, 1659.
