Voices of Thunder - by Naomi Baker (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The stories of early modern Protestant women, including Rose Thurgood, Anna Trapnel, and Jane Lead, who defied the religious authority of their age.

Voices of Thunder illuminates the stories and beliefs of a dozen seventeenth-century radical Protestant women, including a Colchester woman who feared that her four children would starve to death and a former maidservant from Yorkshire who was granted an audience with the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Their belief in spiritual equality empowered them to resist the status quo, questioning the authority of those who sought to lord it over them. From mostly humble backgrounds, they found ways to make their voices heard, creating some of the earliest autobiographical accounts in English and allowing us a rare and precious glimpse of the lives and experiences of women in the early modern era.

Review Quotes

"For the radical religious women who abandoned the Church of England in the seventeenth century, personal contact with God enabled outspoken resistance to the status quo. Urgent and completely absorbing, Voices of Thunder tells their stories in vivid detail, recasting seventeenth-century women's literary history by turning away from elite culture to highlight the innovative and visionary voices of England's dissenting women."--Sarah C. E. Ross, professor of English, Victoria University of Wellington

"In Voices of Thunder Baker gives us the most accessible, detailed, and well-informed study to date of the seventeenth-century women preachers and prophets, at a time when nearly all women were meant to stay home and be quiet. Baker shows us how very many women were involved and influential in the early Baptist and Quaker movements and beyond, and how sharply they saw gender and class oppression, while often enduring harsh persecution, usually by men, at home and abroad. With notable biographical skill and sympathy, the author shows us how the women prophets saw and experienced their world. All can benefit from this book, and many will find it an eye-opening revelation."--Nigel Smith, Princeton University, author of "Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon"

"This book gives eloquent expression to a remarkable group of seventeenth-century women who refused to conform. From intimate domestic spaces to the corridors of power, these women confronted those structures designed to keep them silent and obedient, and they did so by channeling the divinely authorized voice of the conscience. Baker is a lucid and sensitive guide to this fascinatingly complex historical terrain. Her timely book reminds us of the urgent need to listen to the voices of those who disrupt our social and moral commonplaces."--Adrian Streete, professor of early modern literature and religion, University of Glasgow

"This book crackles and fizzes with the energy and bravado of the many overlooked women who metaphorically hitched up their skirts to challenge forms of authority that sought to marginalize them. Baker brings deft erudition to her narrative and stylishly synthesizes the complex histories of religious radicalism in the seventeenth century. This elegantly written and lively book has much to teach us about belief, politics, and activism in both the seventeenth century and the contemporary moment."--Danielle Clarke, professor of English Renaissance language and literature, University College Dublin

"Voices of Thunder offers a groundbreaking account of the radical women who, during the political, social and religious turmoil of seventeenth-century Britain and Ireland, found voice and vocation. Baker is an outstanding guide to this complex, challenging, and extraordinary culture."--Crawford Gribben, professor of history at Queen's University Belfast and author of "J. N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism"

About the Author

Naomi Baker is a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Manchester. She has published widely on early modern women's writing, as well as early modern literature, drama, and culture, and is the author of Plain Ugly: The Unattractive Body in Early Modern Culture.