An Exploration of Seventeenth-Century Quaker Printed Title Pages as Paratext

Paratext refers to all material contained in a printed or manuscript work, including prefaces, marginalia and metadata regarding the publication but excluding the main body of the text. My analysis considers both linguistic phenomena and the visual evidence of each work in the sample. The qualitative study compares the Quaker approach to title page design and language with contemporary printed works by non-Quaker writers in order to test whether it can be said that there is a prototypically Quaker title page. The results show a preference for an ideological framework but a reluctance by Quaker writers to commodify their output. Early Quaker publications demonstrate, in my opinion, a distinctiveness in their approach to creating and producing paratext for pamphlets, tracts and books.