Hester Biddle

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HB is one of the most powerful as well as one of the more prolific seventeenth-century Quaker writers of polemical prophecies or tracts. She depicts in hypnotic, biblical language the imminent end of the world, repeatedly threatening her enemies with the flames. When she uses the first person singular it is often hard to tell whether she is speaking for God or herself.
  • BirthName: Hester
    The form Hester is now in most common use. Biddle also used Ester or Esther, probably to align herself with Queen Esther in the Old Testament of the Bible. Her surname at birth is unknown.

  • Married: Biddle
  • Indexed: Esther Biddle

Milestones

Probably 1629 or 1630

The future HB was born; details about her birth family are unknown.
Hobby, Elaine. “Oh Oxford Thou Art Full of Filth: The Prophetical Writings of Hester Biddle, 1629[?]-1696”. Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Sellers and Susan Sellers, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, pp. 157-69.
158

24 May 1655

HB issued her two first tracts on the same day: the almost identical Wo to thee City of Oxford and Wo to thee Towne of Cambridge.
The date comes from George Thomason , an early owner of the tracts.
Hobby, Elaine. “Oh Oxford Thou Art Full of Filth: The Prophetical Writings of Hester Biddle, 1629[?]-1696”. Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Sellers and Susan Sellers, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, pp. 157-69.
160
Foxton, Rosemary. Hear the Word of the Lord: A Critical and Bibliographic Study of Quaker Womens Writing, 1650-1700. The Bibiographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 1994.
45

1662

HB published her last known tract or prophecy, entitled The Trumpet of the Lord Sounded Forth unto These Three Nations.
Foxton, Rosemary. Hear the Word of the Lord: A Critical and Bibliographic Study of Quaker Womens Writing, 1650-1700. The Bibiographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 1994.
44

5 February 1697

HB died in Clerkenwell, London, aged about sixty-seven.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Probably 1629 or 1630

The future HB was born; details about her birth family are unknown.
Hobby, Elaine. “Oh Oxford Thou Art Full of Filth: The Prophetical Writings of Hester Biddle, 1629[?]-1696”. Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Sellers and Susan Sellers, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, pp. 157-69.
158
She lived first in Oxford (for years), and later in London.

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