Description: This volume gathers and introduces texts relating to English and Welsh Nonconformity. Through contemporary writings it provides a vivid insight into the life and thought of the Methodists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians, and other groups that formed pieces in the diverse mosaic of the nineteenth-century chapels. Each aspect of Nonconformity has an introductory discussion, which includes a guide to the secondary literature on the subject, and each passage from a primary source is put in context.
Brief description: David Bebbington has served since 1976 at the University of Stirling, where he is Professor of History. His books include Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (1989), The Mind of Gladstone: Religion, Homer and Politics (2004) and The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (2005).
Review Quotes: An incredibly impressive anthology of nonconformist life and thought, which transcends the value of most documentary series. Here we have a cornucopia of nonconformity from which scholars, students, conformists and nonconformists, the pious and the impious, may all benefit.
--Martin Fitzpatrick, co-editor of Enlightenment and Dissent
--Betty Hagglund, Project Development Officer for the Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies A major aid to understanding the history and character of Nonconformity.
--Henry D. Rack, author of Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism