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FDU PRESS
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| Scholarly Review |
 | Domesticating the Reformation: Protestant Best Sellers, Private Devotion, and the Revolution of English Piety
ISBN# 0838641091
Reviewed by: Rudolph P. Almasy, West Virginia University
Sixteenth Century Journal XLI/1 |
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Mary Hampson Patterson deals in great detail with three mid-Tutor texts which, as the title of her study indicates, were significant best sellers for the time: The Sick Man's Salve (1558) by Thomas Becon, A Pensive Man's Practice (1584) by John Norden, and A Breife and Necessary Instruction for Householders (1572) by Edward Dering and John Moore. She calls these writers "inconspicuous men who write three fantastically conspicuous books, and in so doing become facilitators of revolution" (25).
After an informative introduction, one finds lengthy sections on each text which, among other things, summarize the theological teachings of these three best sellers. One of Patterson's chief focuses throughout is how each text in some way helped to domesticate the messages of the Reformation by serving as an educational and devotional tool within households. This is especially true in terms of encouraging Bible study and in complementing institutional worship practices.
Within the three central parts of the study, one also finds biographical information and comments on style and form. There is also a consistent interest, not surprisingly, on how each writer used scripture, with some attention to a text's relationship to other modes of protestant propaganda. Patterson is also eager, in a tentative and responsible way, to reassess the value of these best sellers in light of some recent scholarly work on these writers, on their genres, on bookmaking practices, and on the formation of a protestant society. That is, Patterson hopes that her study will contribute to a growing body of knowledge on "how the protestantizing process actually worked" (28).
Patterson's study is well researched with evidence of solid knowledge of the issues in contemporary Reformation scholarship.
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