Manuscript pamphleteering in early Stuart England

Before the outbreak of Civil War in 1642, England developed a large, influential and often radical pamphlet literature. Speeches, learned briefs, and scaffold apologies joined character assassinations, secret histories and conspiracy theories in a jumbled literary underground. Large numbers of copies survive - probably in the tens of thousands - suggesting a significant readership. Nevertheless, this pamphlet literature is rarely mentioned and even more rarely analyzed by historians or literary critics, not least because it was written by hand rather than printed with movable type. The Manuscript Pamphleteering in Early Stuart England project (https://mpese.ac.uk) surveys this vast hidden archive of early Stuart England's manuscript pamphlets. The project uses TEI/XML and the eXist platform to provide a searchable database of several hundred examples with bibliographic information, and digital images, to enable scholars to better understand the production and circulation of pre-Civil War political writing. The AHRC-funded project is a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, University of Bristol, British Library and the History Association. The poster will introduce the aims of the project, the digital platform and the project’s activities such as transcription sessions with volunteers at local archives.