The Journal of John Woolman and a Plea for the Poor

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...