Tace Sowle-Raylton (1666–1749) and the Circulation of Books in the London Quaker Community

Abstract

This article considers the partnership between the female printer-bookseller Tace Sowle-Raylton (1666–1749) and the library of the Society of Friends (Quakers) between 1680 and 1750. It situates the London Quaker community in its immediate geographical and economical context to examine the connections of Quaker networks to the book trade. Under Tace Sowle-Raylton’s influence the Quaker book trade adopted modern commercial techniques, a professionalization visible through the collections of the depository library. Continuing the literary defence put in place by the early Quakers in the 1650s, the library constituted a place of reading and writing for the community leaders, while Tace Sowle-Raylton opened more largely to the market of ideas.

Keywords:

• Society of Friends
• Quaker
• library
• London
• book trade
• bookseller
• Tace Sowle-Raylton

Notes

1. ‘News’, Penny London Post or the Morning Advertiser, 8–10 November 1749, p. 3.

2. J. Dunton, The Life and Errors of John Dunton, late citizen of London, written by himself in solitude (London: printed for S. Malthus, 1705), pp. 300–01.

3. P. McDowell, ‘Women and the Business of Print’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1700–1800, ed. by Vivien Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 135–54.

4. Ibid., p. 141.

5. The ESTC lists 437 titles with T. Sowle as publisher, of which 382 are in the Library of the Religious Society of Friends.

6. The First Publishers of Truth, being early records (now first printed) of the introduction of Quakerism into the counties of England and Wales, ed. by N. Penney (London: Headley Brothers, 14 Bishopsgate Without, E.C., 1907).

7. M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930); E. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). These are the two landmark publications; a bibliography of the debate would be too long to be included.

8. E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership (New York: Free Press, 1979); K. Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

9. I. Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 688.

10. K. Peters, ‘The Dissemination of Quaker Pamphlets in the 1650s’, in Not Dead Things: The Dissemination of Popular Print in England and Wales, Italy, and the Low Countries, 1500–1820, ed. by R. Harms, J. Raymond, and J. Salman (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 213–28 (p. 214).

11. Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers.

12. J. Stalham, Contradictions of the Quakers (Edinburgh, 1655), p. 25; H. Barbour, Early Quaker Writings, 1650–1700 (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1973), p. 14. The overall total of 89,306 books was the estimation of E. Buringh and J. van Zanden, ‘Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of Economic History, 69.2 (June 2009), 409–45, table 2 (p. 417).

13. Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers.

14. W. Shelton, The Quakers Pedigree, or, a dialogue between a Quaker and a Iesuit: who at last become reconciled, as (holding in a great measure) the same principles (London: printed for Benjamin Harris, at the Stationers Arms in Swishins Alley, near the Royal Exchange, 1674).

15. L. C. Wroth, The Colonial Printer (Portland: Southworth-Anthoensen Press, 1938), p. 3.

16. J. Raven, The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 8.

17. Swarthmore Collections, G. Fox to London Women Friends, 28 April 1676, quoted in W. C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism (London: Macmillan, 1919), p. 280.

18. A. Davies, The Quakers in English Society, 1655–1725 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), chap. 9.

19. D. Hall, ‘“The fiery tryal of their infallible examination”: Self-Control in the Regulation of Quaker Publishing in England from the 1670s to the Mid 19th Century’, in Censorship & the Control of Print in England and France, 1600–1910, ed. by R. Myers and M. Harris (Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1992), pp. 34–59.

20. D. Blake, ‘Quakers Living Adventurously: The Library and Archives of the Society of Friends’, Lecture 4 in the series ‘Special Collections’ held at Barnard’s Inn Hall, Gresham College, London, 23 January 2013, transcript and podcast <http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/quakers-living-adventurously-the-library-and-archives-of-the-society-of-friends> [accessed 25 February 2015].

21. J. Smith, Catalogue of Friends’ Books, Ancient and Modern (London: Joseph Smith & Co., 28 Bedford Street, Covent Garden, 1849); J. Smith, Bibliotheca Anti-Quakeriana; or, a catalogue of books adverse to the Society of Friends (London: by Joseph Smith, 6 Oxford Street, Whitechapel, E, 1873).

22. C. Marshall, Plain and candid account of the natures, uses and quantities of some experienced medicine (London: printed for the author, by T. Sowle, at the Crooked-Billet in Holy-well-lane in Shoreditch, 1681); N. Culpeper, The English Physician enlarged (London: printed for Tho. Norris at the Looking-Glass upon London-Bridge; A. Bettesworth at the Red. Lion, and J. Batley at the Dove in Pater-Noster-Row; and S. Ballard at the Blue-Ball in Little-Britain, 1725); Acts for consolidating the estates tail and reversion in fee (London: printed by Charles Bill, and Thomas Newcomb, printers to the Kings most Excellent Majesty, 1686); Act for enabling and obliging the Bank of England, for the time therein mentioned, to exchange all Exchequer bills for ready money (London: printed by the assigns of Thomas Newcomb, and Henry Hills, deceas’d; printers to the Queens most Excellent Majesty, 1711); Act for granting to His Majesty an imposition upon all tobacco and sugar (London: printed by Charles Bill, Henry Hills, and Thomas Newcomb, printers to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1687).

23. McDowell, ‘Women and the Business of Print’, p. 141.

24. K. Peters, ‘The Dissemination of Quaker pamphlets in the 1650s’, in Not Dead Things, pp. 213–28 (p. 214).

25. London, The National Archives, ‘Will of Tace Sowle Raylton, Widow of All Hallows Lombard Street, City of London’, 2 November 1749, PROB 11/774/275.

26. McDowell, ‘Women and the Business of Print’, p. 135.

27. On women in the printing trades, see H. Barker, ‘Women, Work and the Industrial Revolution: Female Involvement in the English Printing Trades, c. 1700–1840’, in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. by H. Barker and E. Chalus (London and New York: Longman, 1997), pp. 81–100; J. Fergus and J. Thaddeus, ‘Women, Publishers, and Money, 1790–1820’, in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 17 (1987), 191–207; P. McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace 1678–1730 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); C. J. Mitchell, ‘Women in the Eighteenth-Century Book Trades’, in Writers, Books, and Trade: An Eighteenth-Century English Miscellany for William B. Todd, ed. by O. M. Brack (New York: AMS Press, 1994), pp. 25–75.

28. T. Carn, ‘An Early Quaker Woman Printer’, The Friend, 4 February 2011, p. 13.

29. B. Franklin, ‘Apology for Printers’, Pennsylvania Gazette, 10 June 1731.

30. P. Lindenbaum, ‘Publishers’ Booklists in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, The Library, 11.4 (December 2010), 382–404 (p. 388).

31. Sowle-Raylton’s accounts have not been preserved in the Library of the Society of Friends; there survive only a list of books and receipt, and the certificate for her marriage to Thomas Raylton, 10 October 1706 (London, Library of the Religious Society of Friends, MS Box L5/14).

32. J. Stobart, ‘Selling (through) Politeness: Advertising Provincial Shops in Eighteenth-Century England’, Cultural and Social History, 5.3 (2008), 309–28 (p. 311); C. Ferdinand, ‘Selling it to the Provinces: News and Commerce round Eighteenth-Century Salisbury’, in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. by J. Brewer and R. Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 393–411.

33. Classified advertisements, Post Man and the Historical Account, 3 March 1698, London, 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Database [accessed 25 February 2015].

34. Classified advertisements, Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, Friday, 18 January 1695, issue 129, London, 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Database [accessed 25 February 2015].

35. Raven, p. 240; J. Alden, ‘Pills and Publishing: Some Notes on the English Book Trade, 1660–1715’, The Library, 5th ser., 7.1 (1952), 21–30.

36. Proposals for Printing by Subscription, the Works of our Worthy Friend, William Penn, Deceas’d (London: Tace Raylton, in George-Yard, Lombard-Street, 1724).

37. Whole will contain about three hundred and sixty sheets, which will make each volume as large as William Sewel’s General History (London: printed by Tace Sowle Raylton and Luke Hinde in George Yard, Lombard-street, [1740–46(?)]).

38. C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 5.

39. Hall.

40. Stationers’ Company Apprentices, 1641–1700, ed. by D. F. McKenzie (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1974).

41. J. Kelsall, A testimony against gaming, musick, dancing, singing, swearing: and peoples calling upon God to damn them (London: printed by T. Sowle at the Crooked Billet in Holloway-Lane, Shoreditch; and are to be sold near the Meeting-House in White-Hart-Court in Grace-Church-Street, 1696); there is a small possibility that Tace was in fact acknowledging her use of her father’s left-over material from his 1682 edition of Kelsall’s tract.

42. Averroeana: being a transcript of several letters from Averroes an Arabian philosopher at Corduba in Spain (London: printed and sold by T. Sowle, 1695).

43. Anonymous (Friend to so good an undertaking), A bank-dialogue: or Doctor Chamberlen’s land-bank explained, by way of question and answer (London: Printed by T. Sowle, in White-Hart-Court in Gracious-street; (where also may be had several small treatises of banks), 1695). Emphasis added.

44. A. Heal, The London Goldsmiths 1200–1800: The Record of the Names and Addresses of the Craftsmen, their Shop-Signs and Trade-Cards (London: University Press, 1935), p.3.

45. A. Rawlinson Barclay, Letters &c., of early Friends; illustrative of the History of the Society, from nearly its origin, to about the period of George Fox’s decease (London: Harvey and Darton, Gracechurch Street, 1841), p. 352.

46. Indeed, in 1779 a Catalogue of Friends books wanted to complete the collection. If any Friends, who have any of the Books herein mentioned, and are willing to dispose of them, will send them to James Phillips in George-Yard, Lombard Street, London, they may have the value thereof either in money or books was printed by the then bookseller to the Library. The books listed are predominantly autobiographies dating from before 1750 and largely written by provincial, Irish, or colonial Quakers; only a few titles are immediately found to be printed by Sowle-Raylton.

47. Religious books and tracts (London, 1755).

48. Advertisement, just published, found inserted at the end of An Account of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (London: printed J. Oliver, printer to the said Society in Bartholomew-Close; and sold by B. Dod. bookseller at the Bible and Key in Ave-Mary Lane, 1752).

49. D. McKitterick, History of Cambridge University Press, ii: Scholarship and Commerce, 1698–1872 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 191–92.