Christopher Hill, marxist historian, found his 17th-c primary sources suffused with a freer Biblical interpretation than we're used to, & a literalism to take the breath of today's "bible literalist."

An excellent history of the period in Britain up to & through the formative period of the Society of Friends. Cf., Macaulay's classic History of England, first published 1848 (now on the web).

Radicals of the English civil wars, the Levellers drew up the principles of popular democracy more than a century before the Amer. revolution. Defeated, many became Quakers. Some texts are on the web.

A sensitive and inquisitive look at the earliest Friends, as a loose group of people with individual strengths and weaknesses. Includes a useful interpretation of the wider historical context.

An edited and abridged version of Fox's Journal, also available on the web. Another, more definitive edition is edited by John L. Nickalls.

William Penn, a leader in the second wave of Quakerism, spent years in prison for printing his religious views.

Jerry Frost, one of the preeminent scholars in American Quakerism, is particularly interested in Friends and the European Enlightenment, from Penn through Woolman.

From the first days of the Quaker movement, women were recognized among Friends as ministers, and by the 1700s they were active throughout. See also Margaret Bacon's "Mothers of Feminism."

This war shaped the place of Friends in America. They withdrew from power in Pennsylvania, & inadvertantly swung the war advantage to the British by convening peace talks with their indigenous allies.

This is the definitive edition of Woolman's Journal and essays, most of which can be found on the web -- but the accompanying notes in this book are worth the price.

Reviews the schism in America from the perspective of today's "liberal, unprogrammed" tradition. Argues Hicks was the true conservative, and that both wings absorbed 19th-c liberalizing tendencies.

Quakerism considered from the pastoral perspective, showing how those strands developed and how they reflect some of the same spiritual insights.