The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder: Mary Toft and Eighteenth-Century England

The first monograph about the case of Mary Toft, who engaged in a monstrous birth hoax in 1726. The book contains new research into the local community, regional and national politics, and the important context of women's lives. It presents several new arguments about the case and early-eighteenth-century England, notably the participation of women in political protest and the faltering steps being taken away from a discredited supernatural reading of the natural world and towards an Enlightened materialist application of reason.