George Fox (1) (1624–1691)

George Fox’s written legacy is huge. After his death in 1691 they were assembled into three major titles: his two-volume Journal (published in 1694), his two-volume Epistles (1696) and finally is doctrinal writings in 1706. Since then, only his Journal has endured many reprints and editions.

Though Fox wrote over 400 epistles in his lifetime, there are many that simply duplicate his ideas and assertions. It therefore made little economic sense to repeatedly reprint the entirety of them in any future edition which explains their rarity. In consequence, they appear as selections—and selections involves choice. One such selection was published in 1825 by Samuel Tuke, a well-respected Quaker from York. And it was this edition that caught the eye of Lucy Hodgkin some twenty years earlier whilst researching for her book on Quaker Saints (available in our Library).

But though she was attracted to the format of Tuke’s edition, she realised if she was to publish a collection of epistles that was truly personal to her, she had to undertake a serious study of all four hundred or so of them published in the 1698 edition. It was to be a time-consuming though spiritually enriching task for, as shes writes in her Introduction 'I came to discover an almost an unworked mine containing rich veins of Truth full of strong counsel and bracing comfort that are increasingly needed in our modern world' (a prescient remark given the outbreak of the second world war was only two years away). But the result of her fruitful endeavors was the publication of her ‘Day-Book of Comfort and Counsel’… (mere)