The Maid of Haddon: event, text and women in Derbyshire literate culture

What is the significance of non-elite women’s participation in literate culture? Taking the case of Martha Taylor, the Maid of Haddon, this essay explores the relationship between local and national, elite and non-elite, micro- and macro- study by analysing texts associated with an event and the literate culture of seventeenth-century Derbyshire. It does so by analysing the texts of visitors to and commentators on Taylor (Thomas Hobbes, John Gratton, Leonard Wheatcroft and members of the Royal Society) and exploring the women to whom they lead us (Ann Gratton, Phebe Bateman, Elizabeth Hawley and the Muggletonian Dorothy Carter). It ends by returning to the question of the relationship between elite and non-elite and, particularly, to questions for microhistory and macrohistory. It discusses also Lodowicke Muggleton, Seigfried Kracaeur, David Levine and Zubedh Vahed