Pennsylvania's role in the development of American culture and society has received an increasing amount of attention in the past two decades, as the tercentenary celebrations of the founding of the province led to a reexamination of the colony and state's contributions to the ethnic and religious diversity of modern America. With increasing pluralism, however, the religious group that was most prominent in the establishment of the province - the Society of Friends, or Quakers - declined in its impact and importance.

"A History of Quakerism" in 3 volumes is a book by the English abolitionist Thomas Clarkson that features all the most important aspects of the Quakers' life, such as education and discipline, social manners, civil and political economy, religious principles and character of their religious organization. Quakers are a historically Christian denomination whose formal name is the "Religious Society of Friends" or "Friends Church". Members of the various Quaker movements are all generally united by their belief in the ability of each human being to experientially access the light within, or "that of God in every one".

"This book--the first to investigate the rich and complex lives of rural women during this period--focuses on women in the Philadelphia hinterland and shows how they became an essential part of that area's rise to agricultural prominence." The author concludes that "rural women in the mid-Atlantic region decreased patriarchal power within the family, became active shapers of the process of commercialization and economic development, and carved out new roles for themselves in public life--providing the base for the development of the feminist movement in the antebellum era"--Jacket.

More than a thousand Quaker female ministers were active in the Anglo-American world before the Revolutionary War, when the Society of Friends constituted the colonies' third-largest religious group. Some of these women circulated throughout British North

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.