Margaret Fell and the rise of Quakerism
By: Bonnelyn Young Kunze.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Stanford, CA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 327
Subjects: Fox, Margaret Askew Fell, 1614-1702.; Society of Friends -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.; Quakers -- Great Britain -- Biography.; Women -- Religious life.; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 17th century.
Description: Focusing on the formative period of Quakerism in seventeenth-century England and the role of one vigorous and authoritative woman, this study offers new insights into the religious, social, and family life of Margaret Fell. The book probes Fell's pivotal role, in close relation to George Fox, in the architecture of the early Quaker church order. It investigates Fell's role in the development of the Quaker women's meetings, a unique seventeenth-century Quaker institution.

It also offers a fresh historical perspective of this socially prominent sectarian woman in terms of her family relationships, the household economic unit, the neighbourhood network, and the wider sectarian religious community that extended far beyond her home, Swarthmoor Hall in rural north-west Lancashire.

The author marshals evidence to argue that it was in keeping with Margaret Fell's social status, permanence of place, personality, and skills learned in the domestic sphere, that she was a co-leader, along with George Fox, in the first fifty years of Quakerism.
Notes: Includes index and bibliography (p. 292-317).