Description:
In a jail in London in 1646, Richard Overton penned a political pamphlet that asserted the inalienable rights of the individual. It is reprinted here with modern spellings and an introduction by Professor Ian Gadd of Bath Spa University.
Brief description: Ian Gadd is a Professor of English Literature at Bath Spa University. He specialises in the literature and history of the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He considers himself to be both a bibliographer and book historian. He is particularly interested in the ways in which printed texts were produced and circulated, and the economics of the early modern English book trade as well as the critical editing of literary and non-literary works from that period. He also has broader research interests in the cultural history of early modern London. Ian co-edited Jonathan Swift's _English Political writings, 1711-14_ (Cambridge University Press, 2008) as part of a new critical edition of Swift's complete works; in 2007, he was made Textual Advisor to this project, and in 2009, General Editor. He is co-editing three further volumes in the series. He edited volume one of a new four-volume _The History of Oxford University Press_, under the general editorship of Professor Simon Eliot, the first three volumes of which were published in November 2013. His PhD was on the history of the Stationers' Company, and he has written several articles on the Company's activities. He is currently co-editing an edition of a Company record, Liber A, with Peter Blayney. With Dr Giles Bergel, he is working on a digital project to make the Stationers' Register searchable. Between 2008 and 2010 he collaborated with Professor Gabriel Egan on a project to create a Virtual Printing Press. He has published articles on London history and the English book trade, and has co-edited a collection of essays on the important sixteenth-century London figure, John Stow; he has also co-edited two collections of essays on guilds in the early modern period. Ian has co-organised international conferences at Bath Spa, supervised to successful completion PhD students working on orality, literacy and the early modern stage, and editing early modern plays. Currently, he is supervising a PhD on the writer William Hayley. He has established links with Bath Central Library, Bath University Library, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Stationers' Company in order to draw on their collections for research-related teaching.