Deeply admired by contemporaries such as King George III, Henry Venn and George Whitefield (who described her as 'all in a flame for Jesus'), Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-91) left an indelible mark on the Evangelical Awakening of the Eighteenth Century. Closely involved for nearly forty years with the leaders of the burgeoning Methodist movement, she gave herself unstintingly to the cause of Christ. She contributed sacrificially to the construction of sixty-four chapels, the opening of many other places of worship, and the founding of Trevecca College in Wales. Drawing on unpublished letters, Faith Cook gives a deeper and truer-to-life portrait than previously available. Introducing the reader to a gallery of well-known Eighteenth Century personalities, she takes us behind the scenes into Selina's drawing rooms. There the Countess secured an entrance for the gospel among the aristocracy through the powerful preaching of such evangelical luminaries as George Whitefield, William Romaine and John Fletcher. The driving passion of Selina's life, according to the author, was 'a zeal for the salvation of her servants, her acquaintances, her family and the nobility'. As Lady Catherwood points out in the Foreword, Faith Cook's biography not only rescues the Countess from undeserved obscurity and misrepresentation, but also shows what God can accomplish through the tireless labours of a godly woman whose heart's desire was that the 'dear Lamb of God, my best, my eternal, my only Friend should have all dedicated to his service and glory'.

This collection of essays addresses the role of literature in radical politics. Topics covered include the legacy of Robert Burns, broadside literature in Munster and radical literature in Wales.

Sent alone to China by the London Missionary Society in 1807, Robert Morrison (1782–1834) was one of the earliest Protestant missionaries in East Asia. During some 27 years in China, Macau and Malacca, he worked as a translator for the East India Company and founded an academy for converts and missionaries; independently, he translated the New Testament into Chinese and compiled the first Chinese-English dictionary. In the process, he was building the foundation of Chinese Protestant Christianity. This book critically explores the preparations and strategies behind this first Protestant mission to China. It argues that, whilst introducing Protestantism into China, Morrison worked to a standard template developed by his tutor David Bogue at the Gosport Academy in England. By examining this template alongside Morrison’s archival collections, the book demonstrates the many ways in which Morrison’s influential mission must be seen within the historical and ideological contexts of British evangelism. The result is this new interpretation of the beginnings of Protestant Christianity in China.

The Spiritual Lives and Manuscript Cultures of Eighteenth-Century English Women explores the vital and unexplored ways in which women's life writings acted to undergird, guide, and indeed shape religious communities. Through an exploration of various significant but understudied personal relationships- including mentorship by older women, spiritual friendship, and care for nonbiological children-the book demonstrates the multiple ways in which women were active in writing religious communities. The women discussed here belonged to communities that habitually communicated through personal writing. At the same time, their acts of writing were creative acts, powerful to build and shape religious communities: these women wrote religious community. The book consists of a series of interweaving case studies and focuses on Catherine Talbot (1721-70), Anne Steele (1717-78), and Ann Bolton (1743-1822), and on their literary interactions with friends and family. Considered together, these subjects and sources allow comparison across denomination, for Talbot was Anglican, Steele a Baptist, and Bolton a Methodist. Further, it considers women's life writings as spiritual legacy, as manuscripts were preserved by female friends and family members and continued to function in religious communities after the death of their authors. Various strands of enquiry weave through the book: questions of gender and religion, themselves inflected by denomination; themes related to life writings and manuscript cultures; and the interplay between the writer as individual and her relationships and communal affiliations. The result is a variegated and highly textured account of eighteenth-century women's spiritual and writing lives.