Robert Ingram & Jason Peacey 
Freedom of speech, 1500–1850 

This collection brings together historians, political theorists and literary scholars to provide historical perspectives on the modern debate over freedom of speech, particularly the question of whether limitations might be necessary given religious pluralism and concerns about hate speech. It integrates religion into the history of free speech and rethinks what is sometimes regarded as a coherent tradition of more or less absolutist justifications for free expression. Contributors examine the aims and effectiveness of government policies, the sometimes contingent ways in which freedom of speech became a reality and a wide range of canonical and non-canonical texts in which contemporaries outlined their ideas and ideals. Overall, the book argues that while the period from 1500 to 1850 witnessed considerable change in terms of both ideas and practices, these were more or less distinct from those that characterise modern debates.

Table of Content

1 Freedom of speech in England and the Anglophone world, 1500–1850 – Jason Peacey, Robert G. Ingram and Alex W. Barber
2 Thomas Elyot on counsel, kairos and freeing speech in Tudor England – Joanne Paul
3 Pearls before swine: limiting godly speech in early seventeenth-century England – Karl Gunther
4 ‘Free speech’ in Elizabethan and early Stuart England – Peter Lake
5 The origins of the concept of freedom of the press – David Como
6 Swift and free speech – David Womersley
7 Defending the truth: arguments for free speech and their limits in early eighteenth-century Britain and France – Ann Thomson
8 ‘The warr… against heaven by blasphemors and infidels’: prosecuting heresy in Enlightenment England – Robert G. Ingram and Alex W. Barber
9 David Hume and ‘Of the Liberty of the Press’ (1741) in its original contexts – Max Skjönsberg
10 The argument for the freedom of speech and press during the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, 1787–8 – Patrick Peel
11 Before – and beyond – On Liberty: Samuel Bailey and the nineteenth-century theory of free speech – Greg Conti
12 Unfree, unequal, unempirical: press freedom, British India and Mill’s theory of the public – Christopher Barker
Index

About the author

Peter Lake is University Distinguished Professor of History at Vanderbilt University