The publisher and bookseller Thomas Davison edited and printed an important radical publication "The Medusa"'. "Davison worked concurrently for two printing presses, one in Whitefriars and another in Duke Street, Smithfield. In addition to The Medusa, Davison also printed The Cap of Liberty and [Richard Carlile's] The Republican at the Smithfield site, continuing the latter's publication even after Carlile's imprisonment until Davison himself was convicted for selling The Republican and The Deists' Magazine. Under the judiciary's policy of dispersing convicted radicals out of the metropolitan areas, Davison was confined to Oakham prison, Rutland." --William St. Clair, "The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period". Davison addressed this pamphlet to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners Sutton, "in the trammels of Christian persecution", during his imprisonment at Oakham jail. The text consists of a series of knotty theological questions regarding God and Christ and the godhead and/or humanity of Jesus.

The printer and publisher of Davison's address was Rhoda Helder, about whom very little seems to be known. In the above referenced work by William St. Clair only a passing reference is made to her: "Davison's Smithfield press was taken over by the female radical press person, Rhoda Helder." Iain McCalman also mentions her in passing in his book "Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840": "A similar loan probably helped Davison to open businesses, first, as an independent printer at Portman Square in September 1819, then as a publisher-bookseller at 10 Duke Street, Smithfield (in conjunction with another mysterious partner or patron, Rhoda Helder)." In his essay "Kinship, Generation and Community: The Transmission of Political Ideology in Radical Plebeian Print Culture", David Worrall writes: "Within a year of Carlile's imprisonment The Republican's production came to a halt when its printer, Thomas Davison, was sent down to Oakham gaol, Rutland. Davison, operating from his Whitefriars premises, was one of Byron publisher John Murray's favored printers throughout the 1810s but from another press at 10 Duke Street, Smithfield, Davison had produced his own radical journal, The Medusa, or Penny Politician, in 1819, possibly cross-subsidizing it with income from Murray's steady Byron printing contracts. Davison's vacated Duke Street press was handed over to the presswoman Rhoda Helder, an activist herself who used the premises in 1821 and 1822 as headquarters for both Carlile's and Davison's support committees, and from whence she published An Appeal To Public Feeling On Behalf Of the Wife and Three Infant Children of Mr. Davison, Who is now confined in Okeham Gaol, for Two Years, for a Libel (1821), detailing Davison's harsh prison conditions."

A rare imprint and pamphlet. No copies of this work are located in WorldCat. Copac locates only the British Library copy and that copy appears to lack the catalog leaf which provides an important insight into the work of a little known woman printer. 
Price: 1250.00 USD