Quaker History

Articles and Publications Mary Ellen Chijioke & Claire B. Shetter The items that have come to our notice over the past six months are marked by their dispersion over the historical landscape. Even our recourse to the default scheme of progressing from Quaker sectarian history through social history to testimonies and witness will leave some dissatisfied, since many items fall equally well into more than one category. An obvious opener is to mention the publication of H. Larry Ingle's longawaited biography, First Among Friends: George Fox & the Creation ofQuakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). A full review will appearin a later issue. In her Ph.D. dissertation on "Strategies of Resistance in Selected Renaissance Writers" (Dalhousie University, 1992), Ingrid Hotz-Davies includes a discussion ofhow the writings of seventeenth-century Quaker women (especially Margaret Fell) and lower-class men operate to break the normative molds of the Bible. Another dissertation of particular interest to students of the first generation of Quakerism is "The Letters ofElisabeth, Princess Palatine: A seventeenth Century Correspondence," by Anna E.S. Creese (Ph.D., Princeton University, 1993). One ofthe most influential continental contacts of early Quakers, her correspondents included Robert Barclay and William Penn. Ruth T. Plimpton provides a layman's introduction to the religious landscape in the first period ofNew England Quakerism in MaryDyer: Biography ofa Rebel Quaker (Boston: Branden, 1994). An interesting contrast is provided in Roland L. Warren's paper, "Whittier and the Quaker 'Argonauts' " (Essex Institute Historical Collections 128.2 (1992): 67-141), which analyzes the series of poems Whittier wrote on the Puritan New England persecutions of Quakers. In Quakerism in York, 1650-1720 (York: York University, 1991; Borthwick paper no. 80), David Scott, a student ofMichael Muffett, documents his challenge to the traditional view ofa "decline" in Quakerism after 1660. Using a statistical analysis ofthe reasons for discipline, he refutes the characterization ofthe period, at least in York before 1720, as the transformation from a sect to a denomination, with its image of formalization and loss of energy. The published version of Nicholas Morgan's doctoral dissertation, Lancashire Quakers and the Establishment , 1760-1830 (Halifax, Yorks.: Ryburn Publishing, 1993) portrays a later generation struggling against the formalizing process in an attempt to maintain the missionary zeal ofthe first generation, more rigorously than their co-religionists in London. A special issue of Quaker Religious Thought (26.3: 1993) deals with changes over time in a major category ofprimary source material, the Quaker journal. In "Stephen Crisp's Short History as Spiritual Journey" (pp. 5-23), Michael P. Graves reappraises Crisp's work in its own terms, not simply in comparison with Bunyan, and fits it into the typologies of religious allegory. Edward Higgins demonstrates in "John Woolman's Journal: Narrative as Quaker Values Transmission " (pp. 25-37) how Woolman allows the reader to participate in his inner 140Quaker History conflict, allowing the narrative, not exhortation, to carry his message. Thomas D. Hamm examines "The Transformation of the American Quaker Narrative Style, 1850-1910" (pp. 39-52), noting the gradual abandonment ofthe traditionaljournal of personal spiritual growth in favor of forms suitable to each of the nineteenthcentury divisions. In his "Comments on the papers of Graves, Higgins, Hamm" (pp. 53-57), J. William Frost accepts the basic thesis of each author, then moves on to suggest other relevant issues requiring further investigation. Biography continues as a standard form ofhistorical narrative. Seeking a New Land: Quakers in New Zealand; a Volume ofBiographical Sketches, edited by James Brodie and Audrey Brodie (Wellington: Beechtree Press, 1993; Quaker Historical Manuscripts, no. 3) starts with Sidney Parkinson, the first Quaker visitor to New Zealand (1769), and continues through Margaret and Howard Wadman (both b. 1907). Richard S. Harrison uses the life of Richard David Webb, Dublin QuakerPrinter (1805-1872) (Bantry, Cork: the author, 1 993) as a window on 1 9th century Dublin Quakerism. Webb, an abolitionist and philanthropist, eventually resigned from the Society ofFriends, repelled by the narrowness ofmid-Victorian Quaker discipline in Ireland. In her portrait ofA Many Sided Man: John Bellows of Gloucester, 1831 to 1902, Quaker Printer, Lexicographer and Archaeologist; His Life andLetters (York: Sessions, 1 993), Kate Charity provides a good example...