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David Edwards and the Later Stuart Underground Press

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Joseph HoneORCiD

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Oxford University Press, 2022.

For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.


Abstract

This article investigates the English underground press in the later Stuart period. Even following the end of pre-publication licensing in 1695, the ongoing threat of government reprisals meant that controversial political and religious tracts continued to be printed in secret. And yet the survival of the underground press into this period has been neglected in recent works of political, religious, social, cultural, and literary history. The dominant view, established by some of the most influential book historians of the past century, is that the materials necessary for a study of secret printing do not survive. This article argues otherwise. Through a detailed case study of the career of one such printer, David Edwards, it illustrates how the clandestine activities of a subset of printers helped shape contemporary debate. Combining historical and bibliographical modes of investigation, this article explores the fundamental mechanics of how controversial tracts, written and printed in secret, reached the reading public. It examines Edwards’s training under the radical Whig printer Thomas Braddyll, his subsequent links to the exiled Jacobite court, and the clandestine techniques he used to disguise his activities and the authorship of books he printed. These included the use of indentures and tokens to ensure against imposters and tweaking copy texts to mask distinctive stylistic ticks. The article concludes by arguing that the vibrant culture of partisan print associated with the later Stuart public sphere was enabled not solely by the demise of pre-publication licensing in 1695, but also by the persistence of the underground press.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Hone J

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: The English Historical Review

Year: 2022

Volume: 137

Issue: 584

Pages: 80–108

Online publication date: 11/03/2022

Acceptance date: 08/02/2022

Date deposited: 08/02/2022

ISSN (print): 0013-8266

ISSN (electronic): 1477-4534

Publisher: Oxford University Press

URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceac031

DOI: 10.1093/ehr/ceac031

ePrints DOI: 10.57711/pv42-yk94


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