Early Quaker History/Bibliography

Please sort and annotate in a user-friendly manner. For formatting, consider using automated reference wikification.

Selected primary sources

The Journal of George Fox, ed N Penney. 2 vols. Cambridge University Press. 1911

The "Spence Manuscript" as dictated by Fox 1674-75.

The Short Journal of George Fox, ed N Penney. Cambridge University Press. 1925

A more vivid account of some earlier events, dictated by Fox 1664

Letters of Early Friends. ed A R Barclay. London. 1841 A Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers, for the Testimony of a Good Conscience, from 1650 to 1689. Joseph Besse. London, 1753, 2 vols. folio.

Selected secondary sources

Braithwaite, W C. The Beginnings of Quakerism. 2nd ed revised by H J Cadbury. Cambridge University Press. 1970.

Still the most detailed account.

Reay, B. The Quakers and the English Revolution. Temple Smith. 1985.

Moore, R. The Light in their Consciences: the early Quakers in Britain 1646-1666. Pennsylvania State University. 2000.

Combines original research into early publications with an attempt to synthesise the spiritual with the modern understanding of the political aspects of the movement.

Bauman, R. Let Your Words Be Few: symbolism of speaking and silence among seventeenth-century Quakers. Cambridge University Press. 1985