The Journal

by Fox, George; Smith, Nigel

• ISBN13: 9780140433999
• ISBN10: 0140433996
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Coming from humble origins, George Fox spent years in search of spiritual enlightenment before experiencing several revelations, or "openings, " which became the basis of Quaker theology. After the formation of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, in 1652, Fox and his associates suffered under brutal persecution from the English government. Fox's Journal, initially dictated to his stepson-in-law when they were both imprisoned in the mid-1670s, combines burning rage against social injustice and a visionary sense of God "rising" through all creation with a forthright account of his own persecution and suffering. Written in a style that, in some respects, anticipates the work of James Joyce and other great modernists, it is, as Nigel Smith writes in his Introduction, not only "a classic of spiritual and autobiographical writing" but "an important literary achievement in its own right."

For this new edition Nigel Smith has "cleaned up" a difficult text to enhance the coherence of the main narrative while retaining the immediacy and excitement of the orig

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Acknowledgements	viii
Introduction	ix
A Note on the Text	xxx
Selected Further Reading	xxxiii
Chronology	xxxvi
The Journal	1	(442)
Appendix I: `G.F. his travels into Ireland, in and out of Ireland as followeth'	443	(13)
Appendix II: The Second Part of Fox's Travels in America	456	(36)
Appendix III: Five of Fox's Letters and a Legal Narrative	492	(7)
Appendix IV: Extracts from William Penn's Preface to the First Edition, 1694	499	(8)
Index of Persons	507	(18)
Index of Places	525