The Confessions of J. Lackington

The Confessions Of J. Lackington: In A Series Of Letters To A Friend, To Which Are Added Two Letters On The Bad Consequences Of Having Daughters Educated At Bearding - Schools by J. Lackington. This is a late-18th/early-19th-century epistolary memoir in which the author recounts his life as a London bookseller and his dramatic religious journey—from engagements with freethinking and infidelity to a renewed commitment to Christianity, influenced by Methodists and traditional piety. Framed as a sequence of letters to a friend (and including two letters on boarding-school education for daughters), the work blends personal narrative, moral exhortation, and social critique. It interlaces anecdotes about the dangers of atheism, reflections on death and repentance, and quotations from poets and philosophers, to argue for religious faith, moral restraint, and charitable conduct. The book thus operates as both autobiography and a polemic on religion, virtue, and education in its era.