This collection of essays is a valuable addition to scholarship on the history of freedom of speech. Focusing on concepts and practices of free speech in the Anglophone world from 1500 to 1850, this volume adopts a longue durée approach. As the editors explain in the first, introductory, chapter, this approach facilitates the integration of religion into the history of free speech, considers the intellectual contexts and defining features of important texts and ‘points out the problems with the triumphalist – “Whiggish” – accounts of free speech that undergird free speech fundamentalism’ (p. 5). Contra simplistic, ‘triumphalist’ interpretations, the editors highlight the merits of revisionist historiography, which has emphasised the contributions of different actors, such as publishers and political authorities, to the thinking and practice of free speech. Revisionist historians have also provided more nuanced and accurate interpretations of the development of freedom of speech, describing it as a struggle rather than a process. Nevertheless, as the editors observe, post-revisionist historiography has offered even more refined accounts of this subject, reexamining the motivations and extent of censorship and its diversified effects on freedom of speech – particularly on freedom of the press. The essays in this volume largely propose post-revisionist interpretations, concerning, above all, the recognition of change in concepts and practices of free speech and, thus, the impact of various actors and dynamics on the history of freedom of speech.

Given also the longue durée approach that this volume presents, one cannot expect to find a comprehensive treatment of such a broad topic in it. And this is not the objective of this volume anyway. The essays in this collection actually promote the rethinking of the historical development of free speech in the Anglophone world by revaluing and recontextualising various important aspects of this subject, some of which have been generally neglected in historiography. Moreover, this volume enables an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, since its contributors come from different disciplines, such as history, political theory and literary studies. Therefore, a brief summary outlining the main merits of each chapter can facilitate a proper appreciation of the many qualities of this book.

While the editors’ chapter i deals with methodological issues, the chapters from ii to v concentrate on the period between the early sixteenth and mid-seventeenth century. Joanne Paul's and Karl Gunther's chapters complement each other in that they explore the dialectic between freedom and restraint (including self-restraint), thereby proving that these attitudes, far from necessarily being opposites, frequently went hand-in-hand in Tudor and early Stuart England. Peter Lake's essay sheds further light on that dialectic, since it rediscovers the importance given to counsel in speech tactics, which varied in accordance with the different audiences that were addressed. David Como's chapter reassesses the significant role that parliament played in the origins of freedom of the press during the Revolution and Interregnum. Questioning Whig teleology, Como demonstrates that even ‘radical’ advocates of press freedom did not see this freedom as unrestricted or unconditional.

The next five chapters investigate different views of free speech in Enlightenment Britain and the early United States. David Womersley's chapter on Swift and Robert Ingram and Alex Barber's essay on blasphemy legislation reconsider the divergence of opinion, particularly among conservatives, about the effectiveness of restraint or self-restraint for the suppression of speech regarded as untruthful, misleading and harmful to salvation. These two chapters show that the main reason for the eventual abandonment of blasphemy laws was that, in the first half of the eighteenth century, restraint was no longer seen as necessarily serving the state's interest and the civil peace. Enlightenment England, however, also witnessed spirited challenges to censorship, such as John Toland's ‘Miltonic’ defence of free speech, which Ann Thomson's chapter examines in detail. None the less, as Thomson aptly notes, the freethinkers’ advocacy of free speech applied mainly to philosophical research (but not to political or religious issues) and, hence, tended to involve only works written by and for an intellectual elite. The intention to contextualise apologias for press freedom also informs Max Skjönsberg's and Patrick Peel's essays. Skjönsberg correctly positions Hume's Of the liberty of the press in the context of debates provoked by Walpole's enactment of new censorship policies, thereby clarifying the reasons behind Hume's developing attitude to this issue. Peel portrays the affirmation of freedom of speech in the United States as the culmination of a cultural struggle between elites and middling social groups. In doing so, he reconsiders ‘a spectrum of moral and political arguments that linked together freedom of speech, press, liberty of conscience and the right to a jury trial as the means to promote the ends of republican self-government’ (p. 193).

The two concluding chapters point out some shortcomings of John Stuart Mill's liberalism. Greg Conti's chapter is a fine study of Samuel Bailey, a philosopher who, three decades before the publication of Mill's On liberty, offered a more advanced defence of freedom of expression, which he described as not only a right, but also a duty. Furthermore, Christopher Barker's essay calls attention to an oft-ignored ‘dark side’ of Mill's thought – namely, his idea that press freedom in colonial India was inappropriate, since he regarded freedoms as conditional.

Briefly, the essays in this volume represent valid contributions to the study of free speech in the early modern and modern Anglophone world. The chapters focusing on complex socio-political and intellectual contexts are admirable for their breadth and are likely to have a major impact on the ongoing historiographical debate on this subject. Moreover, the chapters devoted to traditionally neglected issues have opened new perspectives for further research on the themes they cover. Therefore, this well-designed collection of original essays by first-rate scholars will appeal to anyone interested in the important and controversial history of free speech.