Richard Baxter Quatercentenary Symposium
Friday 13 November 2015, Dr Williams’s Library, 14 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AR
2015 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the Puritan pastor and writer, Richard Baxter (161501691). A symposium to commemorate this event and to assess the significance of Baxter’s contribution to seventeenth-century religious, political, literary and scientific culture in Britain, Europe and North America will be held at Dr Williams’s Library on Friday 13 November 2015. Confirmed speakers include Professor Nigel Smith (Princeton), Professor Ann Hughes (Keele) and Professor Howard Hotson (Oxford). The event will also profile two major editorial projects designed to make Baxter’s key manuscripts accessible to a contemporary scholarly readership: the AHRC-funded edition of Reliquiae Baxterianae and the nine-volume edition of Baxter’s correspondence.
Provisional Programme
12:00-12:30 Buffet Lunch
12:30-15:00 Richard Baxter and Seventeenth-Century Britain, Europe and North America
12:30-13:15 Professor Howard Hotson (Oxford) Title TBC
13:15-14:00 Professor Ann Hughes (Keele) ‘”Doubtless a godly man, though tenacious in his mistakes” (Simeon Ashe on Richard Baxter, 1656): Baxter and English Presbyterians’
14:00-14:45 Professor Nigel Smith (Princeton) ‘Richard Baxter and International Protestantism: by Grammar or by Numbers’
14:45-15:15 Further Discussion
15:15-15:30 Coffee Break
15:30-16:30 The Editing of Richard Baxter
Professor Neil Keeble (Stirling) and Dr Thomas Charlton (DWL) on the Reliquiae Baxterianae (Oxford UP, 5 vols)
Dr Johanna Harris (Exeter) and Dr Alison Searle (Sydney) on the correspondence of Richard Baxter (Oxford UP, 9 vols)
16:00-16:30 Discussion and Questions
16:30 Convene at a nearby venue (TBC) for drinks
Conference fee £10 (£5 students/unwaged), payable on the door. Please register by 31 October 2015 by email to RichardBaxter400@gmail.com. Thanks to the generosity of the Society for Renaissance Studies, the organisers can contribute to the travel and subsistence costs of a small number of unwaged postgraduate or postdoctoral researchers attending the symposium. If you would like to apply for this funding then please contact the organisers prior to the registration deadline.
