As an educated gentleman and naval officer, Richard Brothers dramatically altered eighteenth-century expectations and perceptions of what prophets were and the nature of prophecy itself. The messianic messages delivered to Londoners by the self-styled prophet are central to the religious politics and culture of the 1790s, mockingly referred to by one contemporary critic as the ‘age of prophecy’.

The Paddington Prophet is the first book-length study which probes deep under the skin of Brothers’s apparently idiosyncratic writings and religious ‘enthusiasm’. Close textual analysis of Brothers’s writings shows the extent to which his Biblical, ‘prophetic imagination’ arose out of the same theological, political and cultural context that spurred ‘radicals’ like Tom Paine whilst inspiring poets and artists such as William Blake.

Tracing the contours of his visionary experiences, this book exposes the intensity and vibrancy of Brothers’s faith, the power of his prophetic imagination and the internal logic of his theology.