Friday, February 10, 2017

Hear ye! Hear ye!

As I read through this weeks texts, I started wondering about distribution and the process of printing. Could Wesley (and Edwards) just take their manuscripts to a printer and say "print x number of copies of this"? Were there publishers involved/ was anyone helping to edit any of these texts? (As a modern reader, it seems like they could have used a editor to help with some of their never ending sentences...)

After it was printed, how were the pamphlets distributed? Given the developing (and growing) society structure of the Methodists, did they have a formal distribution method of their own materials in the late 1700s? Was there something like the Christian Science reading rooms? As part of the standardization of their theology, it seems reasonable that Wesley would want to make sure all of the Methodist societies had a copy of "Predestination Calmly Considered" (and not "Freedom of the Will").

Conversely, "Thoughts on Slavery" seems like something Wesley would have wanted to be shared with more than just the Methodists. How were pamphlets advertised to the general public? When people argued back and forth via pamphlet, how would people know when a new rebuttal had been published?

No comments:

Post a Comment