{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}'''Anna Trapnel''' (fl. 1642-1660)<ref name=":0">{{Cite ODNB |title=The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |date=2004-09-23 |editor-last=Matthew |editor-first=H. C. G. |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38075 |access-date=2025-04-18 |place=Oxford |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/38075 |editor2-last=Harrison |editor2-first=B.}}</ref> was a travelling Baptist prophet and Fifth Monarchist active in England in the 1650s.
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==Early life== Trapnel was born in Poplar in the parish of Stepney to the east of the City of London to William Trapnel, a shipwright, and Anne.<ref name=":0" /> {{Incomplete section|date=April 2025}}<mapframe latitude="50.951506" longitude="-2.120361" zoom="5" text="Trapnel traveled over 270 miles from London to Cornwall. " width="250" height="150"> { "type": "FeatureCollection", "features": [ { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -0.124474, 51.506231 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -5.051747, 50.26331 ] } } ] } </mapframe>
After her mother’s death, she began to experience religious raptures and visions; she attended the Baptist church and was involved with Familism before joining the Fifth Monarchists in 1652.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://academic.oup.com/book/48707/chapter-abstract/420668697?redirectedFrom=fulltext |title= “Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700): An Anthology”, page 295 |author=<!--Not stated--> |date= March 2001|website= Oxford University Press |publisher= |access-date= September 22, 2025 |quote=}}</ref>
In April 1654 she was arrested on charges of witchcraft, madness, whoredom, vagrancy, and seditious intent; she answered the judges’ questions with parables and bible verses and managed to avoid the death penalty.<ref name=NCWW>{{cite web |url= https://www.nonconformistwomenwriters1650-1850.com/biographical-summaries/trapnel-anna-fl-1642-60 |title= Trapnel, Anna (fl. 1642-60) |last= |first= |date= |website= Non Conformist Women Writers 1650-1850 |publisher= |access-date= September 17, 2025 |quote=}}</ref>
Most of her publications began as transcriptions of her sayings which were written down by a friend during her times of spiritual rapture.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01537-4_360-1 |title= Trapnel, Anna |last= Tarr |first= N. |date= 20 September 2024 |website= The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing |publisher= Palgrave Macmillan |access-date= September 17, 2025 |quote=}}</ref>
Many of her works foretold the defeat of all political rulers due to Jesus’ victorious return to earth.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://doi.org/10.1017/9789048539178.006 |title= Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe Chapter 6 - Anna Trapnel: Prophet or Witch? Page 113 |last= Parish |first= Debra |date= 2019 |website= Amsterdam University Press |publisher= |access-date= September 17, 2025 |quote=}}</ref>
==Works==
* [https://archive.org/details/per_quaker-womens-tracts_trapnel-anna_1654/mode/2up ''The Cry of a Stone''], 1654 <ref name=TF>{{cite web |url= https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0268117X.2020.1721312#d1e367 |title= “To print her discourses & hymmes”: the typographic features of Anna Trapnel’s prophecies |last= McGann |first= Claire |date= 3 February 2020|website= Taylor and Francis |publisher= “The Seventeenth Century” Volume 36, 2021, issue 2, page 233 |access-date= 17 September 2025 |quote=}}</ref> * ''Strange and Wonderful News from White-Hall: Or, The Mighty Visions Proceeding from Mistris Anna Trapnel'', 1654 <ref name=TF /> * [https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_anna-trapnels-report-an_trapnel-anna_1654 ''Anna Trapnel's Report and Plea; or, a Narrative of Her Journey from London into Cornwall''], 1654 <ref name=TF /> * [https://archive.org/details/per_quaker-womens-tracts_a-legacy-for-saints-_trapnel-anna_1654 ''A Legacy for Saints; Being Several Experiences of the dealings of God with Anna Trapnel''], 1654 <ref name=TF /> * [https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_a-lively-voice-for-the-k_trapnel-anna_1658 ''A lively voice for the king of saints and nations''] 1658 <ref name=TF />
==Notes== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading == *Lyn Bennet. ‘Women, Writing, and Healing: Rhetoric, Religion, and Illness in An Collins, “Eliza”, and Anna Trapnel’. ''Journal of Medical Humanities'', vol. 36, 2015, pp. 157–70. *Rebecca Bullard. ‘Textual Disruption in Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea (1654)’. ''The Seventeenth Century'', vol. 23, 2008, pp. 34–53. *Kate Chedgzoy. ‘Female Prophecy in the Seventeenth Century: The Instance of Anna Trapnel’. ''Writing and the English Renaissance'', edited by William Zunder and Suzanne Trill, Longman, 1996, pp. 238–54 *Catie Gill. ‘“All The Monarchies Of This World Are Going Down The Hill” The Anti-Monarchism of Anna Trapnel’s The Cry of a Stone (1654)’. ''Prose Studies'', vol. 29, pp. 19–35. *Elspeth Graham. ‘“Licencious Gaddyng Abroade”: A Conflicted Imaginary of Mobility in Early Modern English Protestant Writings’. ''Études Épistémè'', vol. 35, 2019, pp. 1–30. *Hilary Hinds. ‘Soul-Ravishing and Sin-Subduing: Anna Trapnel and the Gendered Politics of Free Grace’. ''Renaissance and Reformation'', vol. 25, 2001, pp. 117–37. *Kevin Killeen. ‘“People of a Deeper Speech”: Anna Trapnel, Enthusiasm, and the Aesthetics of Incoherence’. ''The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women’s Writing in English, 1540-1700'', Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 203–16. *Erica Longfellow. ''Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England''. Cambridge University Press, 2004. *Maria Magro. "Spiritual Biography and Radical Sectarian Women's Discourse: Anna Trapnel and the Bad Girls of the English Revolution". Journal of Medieval and Modern Studies, 2004. *Susannah B. Mintz. ‘The Specular Self of “Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea’. ''Pacific Coast Philology'', vol. 25, 2000, pp. 1–16. *Marcus Nevitt. ‘“Blessed, Self-Denying, Lambe-like?” The Fifth Monarchist Women’. ''Critical Survey'', vol. 11, 1999, pp. 83–97. *Ramona Wray. ‘“What Say You to [This] Book? [...] Is It Yours?”: Oral and Collaborative Narrative Trajectories in the Mediated Writings of Anna Trapnel’. ''Women’s Writing'', vol. 16, 2009, pp. 408–24.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Trapnell, Anna}} Category:1630s births Category:Year of birth unknown Category:Year of death unknown Category:17th-century English women writers Category:17th-century English writers Category:English pamphleteers Category:Proto-feminists Category:Feminism and spirituality Category:Fifth Monarchists Category:People from Stepney Category:Women in the English Civil War Category:Feminism in England