Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century

‘Naomi Baker’s Voices of Thunder is a history of the dissenting women who wrote, preached, and testified during this tumultuous century . . . Radical spiritual writing – prophecies, autobiographies, spiritual accounts – was a genre in which women flourished, introducing new experiences into print: they wrote about childbirth, about raising and feeding children, about abusive marriages, about their own trials with poverty and hunger, about travel and their encounters with cultures across the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. Their texts are not typically included in histories of feminism . . . but Baker shows that to ignore this work is to ignore a set of idiosyncratic, clamorous, complex testimonies about what it was like to live then as a fierce female critic of one’s own society.’ – Erin Maglaque, New York Review of Books

‘They are ordinary women from humble backgrounds who became remarkable . . . It is their writings – often the only traces we have of them – that Baker analyses attentively and sympathetically.’ – Alice Hunt, History Extra magazine

‘[In] her scintillating book, Voices of Thunder . . . Baker’s talent (apparent throughout this book) for presenting apparently arcane – maybe even outlandish-seeming – beliefs with sympathy, seriousness and clarity becomes most emphatically apparent . . . The history of radical religious women has occupied something of a niche position. As a counter to this relative neglect, and with a combination of extraordinary lucidity and precision, Baker puts these women into the spotlight, powerfully demonstrating their importance.’ – Elspeth Graham, Literature & Theology

‘Baker’s book explores how many women were empowered by the conviction of their faith – and the liberating possibilities of the absence of censorship – to articulate their experiences and to shake the foundations of old-established traditions and practices . . . This is a brilliant subject for a book: the many different sects of the period really did have high-profile, highly vocal women in their ranks, even if those voices, and their distinctly female perspectives, have continued to be drowned out in much of the historiography.’ – Matthew Lyons, Broken Compass

‘In Voices of Thunder Naomi Baker gives us the most accessible, detailed and well-informed study to date of women preachers and prophets of the seventeenth-century, 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

‘Voices of Thunder offers a ground-breaking account of the radical women who, during the political, social and religious turmoil of seventeenth-century Britain and Ireland, found voice and vocation. Naomi 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

‘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 marginalise them. Naomi Baker brings deft erudition to her narrative and stylishly synthesises 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

‘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 channelling the divinely authorised voice of the conscience. Naomi 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

‘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

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 including Plain Ugly: The Unattractive Body in Early Modern Culture (2010).