Print Culture and the Early Quakers

Quaker leaders wrote deliberately, making tracts relevant to their readers by referring to specific audiences and locations. [...]the publication of Quaker tracts was carefully orchestrated and controlled by a handful of radical publishers who devoted their time, money, and resources to the movement To great effect, Peters uses the case of pamphleteering in East Anglia to demonstrate how print "contributed towards the creation of a nationally homogenous and coherent movement" (73), as Quaker leaders like Richard Hubberthorne helped transform the image of Quakers in Cambridge from "passing troublemakers to part of a sustained attack on the town" (79). According to Peters, Quaker tracts helped stimulate religious debate and universal participation in their repeated challenges to the church and professional ministry, as Quaker leaders published both the virulent attacks from their critics and their own responses. Peters uses the well-documented case of James Nayler, the early Quaker leader accused and convicted of blasphemy, to illustrate how the Quakers wielded an "impressive command of the press" in order to keep the sect together in spite of a very significant internal blow to the movement (234).