A Company of Women Preachers:  Baptist Prophetesses in Seventeenth Century England; A Reader, edited by Curtis W. Freeman (Baylor University, Waco, Texas, 2011) xv, 824pp., hardback, £66.99, 978 1 60258 318 4

This monumental volume allows the prophetic women with which it is concerned to speak for themselves.  The editor admits that it is a hard read as prophetic women are controversial among Conservatives, Liberals and Feminists alike and indeed their writings have been ignored for centuries.

It is a catholic collection which is presented including the sixteen year old Sarah Wright who famously fasted in 1647 and had visions.  A selection of thirteen texts was made by identifying Baptist women who engaged in prophetic activity between the English Civil War and the Act of Toleration, 1642-1689.  The decision to keep each text close to the original involved excluding others which qualified by these criteria. 

Curtis Freeman, Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, offers a basically scholarly work, with an extensive bibliography of articles and monographs from the seventeenth century and modern studies in England and America, a full scripture index and an index of names and subjects, which curiously does not always follow alphabetical sequence (e.g. putting people before prophesy) It is a worthy reference collection of often ignored voices from the past.