The Idea of Puritan Literature

Abstract

Abstract The introductory chapter explores a range of topics to help the reader understand the complexity of the subject. These are: different interpretations and uses of the labels ‘Puritan’, ‘nonconformist’, and ‘dissenter’ in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century lectures and historical works, demonstrating the different perspectives of their Congregational, General Baptist, and Particular Baptist authors; narrative accounts of key figures in eighteenth-century biographical dictionaries by Church of England and Presbyterian authors; abridged editions and lives in popular small formats of the principal seventeenth-century authors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and substantial scholarly editions, series, and biographies in the nineteenth century. The label ‘Puritan’, which had been largely dropped in the eighteenth century, began to replace ‘nonconformist’. The chapter concludes with an account and selected bibliography of N. H. Keeble’s work.