Richard Baxter's Reliquiæ Baxterianæ (1696) is a key text for early modern historical, ecclesiastical, cultural, literary, and bibliographical studies but in its original printed form it is textually defective in a number of ways and, lacking structural coherence or adequate indexes, the wealth of historical data and immediately observed experiences during the Civil Wars, Interregnum, and Restoration period in its 800 pages are very difficult to access. It is similarly challenging to follow the compelling case that Baxter mounts to vindicate moderate Puritanism against the misrepresentations of the prevailing royalist narratives published in the later seventeenth-century, culminating in Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. No other work from the period articulates so fully this much maligned tradition, and no other example of life writing so fully explores the relationship between public affairs and personal spiritual and emotional experience. The result is not only a unique primary source but also a fascinating combination of autobiography, historiography, and apologetic in a work crucial to our understanding of the development of modern narrative genres.
This edition, prepared by an international team of early modern scholars and based on Baxter's autograph manuscript where this is extant, for the first time makes this unique work available in a reliable text with a full supporting apparatus. This apparatus includes: extensive general and textual introductions; explanatory commentary and textual notes; supporting documentation, much of it never before published; a detailed chronology; an expository linguistic and historical glossary; the fullest available bibliography of Baxter 140 or so published titles, whose occasion and publication are a recurrent topic in the text; and four indexes.
