I.B.Tauris Studies in Prophecy, Apocalypse and Millennialism – serie

Joanna Southcott (1750 – 1814) remains one of the most significant and extraordinary religious figures of her era. In an age of reason and enlightenment, her apocalyptic prophecies attracted tens of thousands of followers, and she captured international attention with her promise to bear a divine child. In this new intellectual biography Matthew Niblett unravels Southcott's writings, her context and her message to demonstrate why the prophetess was such a magnetic figure and to highlight the significance of her role in British religious history. Using a wide range of contemporary sources, this revealing study explains the formation of Southcott's apocalyptic theology, her treatment of the Bible, her relation with the Church, the network of clerical supporters she used and the striking originality of her message. In so doing, this book shines fresh light on religion and the politics of salvation in late Georgian England.

Joanna Southcott (1750 – 1814) remains one of the most significant and extraordinary religious figures of her era. In an age of reason and enlightenment, her apocalyptic prophecies attracted tens of thousands of followers, and she captured international attention with her promise to bear a divine child. In this new intellectual biography Matthew Niblett unravels Southcott’s writings, her context and her message to demonstrate why the prophetess was such a magnetic figure and to highlight the significance of her role in British religious history. Using a wide range of contemporary sources, this revealing study explains the formation of Southcott’s apocalyptic theology, her treatment of the Bible, her relation with the Church, the network of clerical supporters she used and the striking originality of her message. In so doing, this book shines fresh light on religion and the politics of salvation in late Georgian England.

A feverish expectation of the end of the world seems an unlikely accompaniment to middle-class respectability. But it was precisely her interest in millennial thinking that led Jane Shaw to a group of genteel terraced townhouses in the English county town of Bedford. Inside their unassuming grey-brick exteriors Shaw found something extraordinary. For here, within the 'Ark', lived two members of the Panacea Society, last survivors of the remaining Southcottian prophetic communities in Britain. And these individuals were the heirs to a rich archive charting not just their own apocalyptic sect, but also the histories of the many groups and their leaders who from the early nineteenth century onwards had followed the beliefs of the self-styled prophetess and prospective mother of the Messiah ('Shiloh'), Joanna Southcott, who died in 1814. Placing its subjects in a global context, this is the first book to explore the religious thinking of all the Southcottians. It reveals a transnational movement with striking and innovative ideas: not just about prophecy and the coming apocalypse, but also about politics, gender, class and authority.The volume will sell to scholars and students of religion and cultural studies as well as social history.