Isaac Penington, A Voyce out of the Thick Darkness (1650)

Isaac Penington (1616–1679) was a Quaker writer. Although A Voyce out of the Thick Darkness (1650) was published before his conversion to Quakerism in 1658, it already displays his disillusionment with the established Church of England. A vocal commentator on England’s political problems, Penington expressed in his writings an overriding need for spiritual solace, which he felt to be necessary both for himself and for the people of the nation. 

This copy of A Voyce out of the Thick Darkness (1650) was previously owned by James Midgley (1786–1852), who wrote the contents list for the sammelband of which this work is part. Midgley’s substantial collection of Quaker literature was presented by his children to the Lancashire and Cheshire Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends in 1863. The collection was transferred to the John Rylands Research Institute and Library on permanent loan in 1955.

Midgley’s copy contains an extra leaf inserted before the title page, featuring a portrait line engraving of Penington’s father, Isaac Penington (c. 1584–1661), the Lord Mayor of London. Based on an anonymous woodcut produced in 1643, this engraving was published in 1800 by the printseller William Richardson (fl. 1777–1814).

It is not clear whether Midgley himself was responsible for inserting the frontispiece portrait before the title page; nor do we know whether he wrote the pencil inscription identifying the elder Penington as the father of the author of A Voyce out of the Thick Darkness (1650). In any case, as we have already seen with the copy of Deaths Advantage Little Regarded (1602), tipped-in frontispiece portraits were a popular choice of illustration for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century book collectors.

Further Reading

Greaves, Richard L., ‘Penington, Isaac (1616–1679)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/21841