Our exploration of the worlds of non-elite writers in early modern England has now completed its first year and a half, so it seemed like a good time to tell you all what we’ve found so far. We have focused much of our attention on questions of methodology and remit, while also seeking to build up an empirical foundation and begin discussions with a wide range of other scholars.

Perhaps the thorniest issue we have faced is working out what we mean by ‘non-elite’ and ‘discursive writing’. Unsurprisingly, despite spending many hours of reading and productive discussion, we haven’t pinned down a conclusive definition. We have, however, gradually developed a draft series of interrelated questions that we are using to put together our database of ‘writers’. It is not ready to share with the world just yet, but it does include thinking carefully about the status, wealth, education, gender, race and nationality of potential writers, and about the genre, intention and production of potential texts. Although we will continue to refine this, we now have enough of a sense of our main targets to systematically gather evidence.

Building up a collection of non-elite writers has been a hugely enjoyable part of our work. While we began with an initial list of names from Sue and Brodie’s previous and preliminary research, this expanded dramatically over the course of the year thanks to the painstaking creative efforts of Robert Stearn (postdoctoral research associate in 2022-23) who combed existing secondary scholarship, catalogues, handlists and databases – such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography – as well as diving into various archival collections to find more non-elite writers. The result is an initial database of more than 400 named individuals who will form the basis of much further investigation in the coming years. Because so much of the material is still in draft form, this is again not ready to be shared widely yet, though a revised and expanded version will be published later in the project.

We have begun to discuss our shared research interests with a broad group of other scholars from within and beyond the UK. We held an initial colloquium on ‘Finding Non-Elite Londoners’ and a second on ‘Writing Work’, both based at Birkbeck. Across these two events, we heard ten illuminating talks from other researchers and all three of the project team presented some of our own initial findings too. The first event provided a valuable methodological discussion of how to find and think about Londoners who left textual traces, whether directly or indirectly. The second symposium offered an opportunity to look at how ‘work’ related to writing at this time, both as a topic and as a practice. Alongside these larger events, we also met with other researchers more informally, including a research group in Budapest run by Natalia Pikli, who have helped us in thinking about the many types of writing that we are encountering.

Finally, we are now scaling up our project through the recent appointment of four post-doctoral research associates to carry on and expand the work we have begun in all these different areas. Richard Ansell will be focusing on travel and mobilities, Michael Powell-Davies on London, Hannah Robb on the provinces, and Laura Seymour on women. We are already looking forward to hearing what new perspectives these researchers will bring to Written Worlds.