THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WOOLMAN AND A PLEA FOR THE POOR: The Spiritual Autobiography of the Great Colonial Quaker

John Woolman; (Frederick B. Tolles, Introduction)

ISBN 10: 0806502940 / ISBN 13: 9780806502946

Published by The Citadel Press, New York, NY, 1961

About this Item

Text/As New & Bright. 7th Printing. Softcover/Fine. PO stamp to lower text edge. Posthumous autobiography of ardent, New Jersey-born, tailor, merchant, journalist and Quaker minister John Woolman (1720 - 1772) was an early abolitionist during the colonial era. A champion of Blacks in slavery & a firm advocate of philanthropy. First published 1774, this is the classic journal of inner life characteristics. The lead essay, "A Plea for the Poor", is also the concluding one, begins on pg 224; first printed in 1793, composed of 12 Sections, argues for tenderness for those in need, and how wrong it is to cling to "claims grounded on prior possession". 249 pgs in 12 chapters identified by time period year covered & annotations by Frederick Tolles.

Seller Inventory # 017371

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WOOLMAN AND A PLEA FOR THE POOR: The Spiritual Autobiography of the Great Colonial Quaker
• Publisher: The Citadel Press, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 1961
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0806502940
• ISBN 13: 9780806502946
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Edition, 7th Printing
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: None as Issued
• Seller catalogs:
  • Religion, Theology, Spiritual
  • Biography, Autobiography, Memoir
  • Philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

The "journal" or spiritual autobiography of John Woolman was the characteristic literary expression of Quakerism in its first two centuries. Woolman's Journal was first published in 1774 (shortly after his death). His life, as recorded by himself, was the finest flower of a unique Quaker culture, Whose focus, as Howard H. Brinton has put it, was not on the literary or plastic arts but on "life itself in home, meeting and community," a life which was an "artistic creation as beautiful in its simplicity and proportion as was the architecture of its meeting houses..." Its distinguishing marks marks were not dogmas but practical testimonies for equality, simplicity and peace. These testimonies, once revolutionary in their social implications, were already becoming institutionalized in Woolman's time as the badges of a "peculiar people." In his quiet way-- he must have been the quietest radical in history-- John Woolman reforged them, tempered them in the stream of love, and converted them once again into instruments of social revolution.