Elizabeth Ryland Priestley, Early American Author on Free Speech
Two of the items in Thomas Cooper’s Political Essays—the first part of On the Propriety and Expediency of Unlimited Enquiry, and the reply to Cooper’s Observations on the Fast Day—are written by Elizabeth Ryland Priestley (1769–18163), the daughter-in-law of Cooper’s friend and eminent chemist and philosopher Dr. Joseph Priestley.
Cooper gave credit to his coauthor by labeling the items as having been written by “E.P.,” and by noting her more specifically (“Mrs. Priestley”) in the preface to On the Propriety. But her work has since gone unremarked. Leonard Levy cited On the Propriety as “a two-part essay,” but credited it entirely to Cooper. An essay in The Press & the American Revolution cited several passages that it credited to Cooper, yet all but one of the citations were to Priestley’s part; Priestley’s name was not mentioned. One of the few works on Cooper and free speech, a master’s dissertation published by the University of Wisconsin, discusses Cooper’s work extensively but doesn’t mention Priestley’s contribution. Cooper’s biographer Dumas Malone mentions her only very briefly.
