The Writings of Elizabeth Webb: A Quaker Missionary in America, 1697–1726 ed. by Rachel Cope and Zachary McLeod Hutchins

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Writings of Elizabeth Webb: A Quaker Missionary in America, 1697–1726 ed. by Rachel Cope and Zachary McLeod Hutchins Jennifer Desiderio (bio) The Writings of Elizabeth Webb: A Quaker Missionary in America, 1697–1726 rachel cope and zachary mcleod hutchins, eds. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019 226 pp. The Writings of Elizabeth Webb: A Quaker Missionary in America, edited by Rachel Cope and Zachary McLeod Hutchins, is the first comprehensive collection of Webb’s writing. A Quaker woman who lived in the American colonies and England at the turn of the eighteenth century, Elizabeth Webb crossed the Atlantic five times, dedicating her life to cultivating Quaker communities. Webb’s writings offer students a unique glimpse into a woman who led a public life as a Quaker minister while maintaining a private life as mother and wife. The texts in The Writings of Elizabeth Webb thus range in content and audience, from letters and memorials affectionately penned to her children to a public manuscript on the book of Revelation. In addition to her public and private identities, the collection showcases Webb’s transatlantic identity as she describes the universal love that she experiences for all people in the cluttered, urban London streets and the fear she feels in the wilderness in North Carolina. The Writing of Elizabeth Webb exposes students to the beliefs and agency of an individual Quaker woman and serves as a fitting complement and striking contrast to Webb’s Puritan contemporaries. Editors Cope and Hutchins claim that Webb’s “life and words should stand beside those of women such as Anne Hutchinson, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Sarah Kemble Knight, and Abigaill Levy Franks” (5). Their introduction, titled “Webb and Her World,” convincingly supports this claim by situating Webb within her colonial and Quaker context and by describing the tradition of life writing for women. Cope and Hutchins dedicate a section of their introduction to George Fox, Margaret Fell, and [End Page 563] the early modern Quaker movement. Here readers learn of the opportunities available to Quaker women to minister, evangelize, and write. One to two generations removed from Bradstreet, Hutchinson, and Mary Dryer, Webb first traveled to the British American colonies in 1697, when nonconformists, including the Quakers, worshipped without fear of persecution. Due to Parliament’s passing of the Toleration Act of 1689, Webb could travel the expanse of the colonies, publish letters and essays, and preach publicly without danger. Cope and Hutchins write, “Webb’s journey was difficult, but because of the women who went before her, not particularly dangerous” (8). Her active life as a Quaker granted her exceptional agency, mobility, and power, especially in comparison to most British colonial women in the American colonies. The Writings of Elizabeth Webb is a comprehensive collection of all of Webb’s public and private writing. Her public writing includes a letter written in 1712 to Anthony Boehm, a German Pietist who served as chaplain to Prince George of Denmark, the consort of Queen Anne of England, and a commentary on the book of Revelation. Her letter to Boehm reads much like a personal narrative as she describes her struggles with her upbringing, faith, and travels. Her letter circulated while she was alive, and later, it was reprinted in Philadelphia by a Quaker printer and bookseller in 1781, meriting a second edition in 1783. Cope and Hutchins claim that the letter “inspired thousands of readers” and served as a “spiritual guide to social upheaval in the age of revolution” (3). In her meditation on the book of Revelation, Webb’s mastery of Scripture is apparent as she meticulously responds to individual chapters and verses. Interesting for students, particularly undergraduate students, is a comparison of either Webb’s letter to the reader or publisher Thomas Chaklely’s letter to the reader with Rowland-son’s frontispiece to her narrative. Rowlandson’s frontispiece showcases the power of the Puritan patriarchs, not the female author’s power, whereas Chaklely’s letter describes with great esteem Webb’s intelligence and the strength of her faith. The comparison is a striking reflection of the Quaker and Puritan religions in colonial America and their treatment and encouragement of women in the...