Dorcas Dole
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2017}}
{{Use British English|date=November 2017}}
{{Short description|English Quaker pamphleteer}}
Dorcas Dole (fl. later 17th century) was a Quaker religious pamphleteer from Bristol, England, of whose background and private life little certain is known.Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, eds: The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 302. She may have been the Dorcas Dole married to a Bristol silk weaver, John Dole, who died in 1699. She herself died in 1717.Minute Book of the Men's Meeting of the Society of Friends in Bristol, 1667–1686 (Reprinted by Bristol Record Society, 1971): p. 199 [https://books.google.com/books?id=TJNnAAAAMAAJ&dq=Dorcas+Dole&pg=PA199 Retrieved 12 November 2017.]
Quaker emphases
Earlier Quaker preachers and pamphleteers, male and female, had been forthright in their political criticisms, even while serving jail sentences, but their approach became more compliant after the Restoration. Quakers became less willing to defend women publicly, for instance if they had disrupted church services.
Exact charges against Dole have yet to be clarified, but she was "harshly treated for praying and preaching in prison." Nonetheless, politics entered into an influential pamphlet written by Dole while she was in Bristol's Bridewell Prison: Salutation and Seasonable Exhortation to Children was addressed in 1682 to the children "who kept up the meetings in Bristol when the adult members were in prison." Published in 1683 and reprinted in 1700, its main concern was with disobedience among the Quaker children: "For though you are Young and Tender in Years, you know not how soon the Messenger of Death may come to call you."
Another pamphlet published in Bristol by Dorcas Dole in 1683 and again in 1684 was Once more a Warning to Thee, O England, but more particularly to the inhabitants of the city of Bristol.National Library of Australia [https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/873911 Retrieved 13 November 2017.] She was in Bristol's Newgate Prison at the time and describes her conditions. However, she also argues for obedience to the King. In 1683 Dole contributed to A Salutation of my Endeared Love by the fellow Quaker sectary Elizabeth Stirredge,Obituary and life by John Whiting and some Stirredge writings: [http://www.hallvworthington.com/Stirredge.html Retrieved 15 November 2017.] and in 1684 published a work of her own under the same title, which was reprinted two years later.
External source
- Copies of Dole's pamphlets are available in the British Library.The British Library: [http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do;jsessionid=F15BD62B1E75E8E66184748DB1FEE460?fn=search&ct=search&initialSearch=true&mode=Basic&tab=local_tab&indx=1&dum=true&srt=rank&vid=BLVU1&frbg=&tb=t&vl%28freeText0%29=Dorcas+Dole&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BLCONTENT%29&vl%28488279563UI0%29=any&vl%28488279563UI0%29=title&vl%28488279563UI0%29=any Retrieved 25 November 2017.]
References
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Category:17th-century English women writers
Category:17th-century English writers
Category:17th-century Protestant theologians