Briefer Notices

BRIEFER NOTICES By Henry J. Cadbury Six Weeks Meeting 1671-1971; Three Hundred Years of Quaker Responsibility, by Winifred M. White (Friends House, Euston Road, London, 1971, 119 pages, illustrated). This sprightly and full account of what George Fox called "the prime meeting of the city" exploits the very complete records of that meeting in connection with the very numerous meeting properties in greater London. It does for our generation what Beck and Ball, London Friends Meetings, 1869, did a century ago. The end papers supply a contemporary map and an ancient one. There is a good index. Though concerned mainly with outward things, like physical properties and finances, the human and spiritual interests of metropolitan Quakerism shine through. * * * The Quakers as Type of the Spirit-Centered Community by William P. Roberts, S. J., is a Ph.D. thesis accepted by Marquette University in 1968. It is obtainable in mimeograph form as No. 1 in Catholic and Quaker Studies from 1110 Wildwood Ave., Manasquan, N.J. 08736. The author selects features of Quakerism justifying the title and corresponding features in the Catholic tradition both in the middle ages and in the Second Vatican Council. * * * Russell Mortimer has edited for publication by the Bristol Record Society in 1971 the Minute Book of the Men's Meeting of the Society of Friends in Bristol 1667-1686. The contents of these minutes is of great variety and interest. Few similar books have been published, none so early in date, or representing a city meeting. The editing, introduction, and indexing are exemplary. * * * Fred Haslam has published a record of nearly half a century of the various aspects of Canadian Quakerism with which he has been intimately connected. On a small scale they correspond with parallel matters in modern Quakerism elsewhere. The intimate but objective account will be suggestive to readers in other areas. The full title is A record of experience with and on behalf of the Religious Society of Friends in Canada and with the Canadian 126 BRIEFER NOTICES127 ecumenical movement, 1921-1967, with some thoughts for the future. No publisher is mentioned. * * * Friends in Central America by Paul C. Enyart (William Carey Library, South Pasadena, Calif., 1970, 186 pages) is an informative account of the evangelical Friends missions in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala which in late 1970 were established as the Central America Yearly Meeting of Evangelical Friends Churches. It compares Friends with other evangelical churches in the area and analyzes various factors in the growth of the Friends Church there. It is a wide ranging discussion richly illustrated with maps, charts, etc. * * * Prudence Crandall; an Incident of Racism in NineteenthCentury Connecticut, by Edmund Fuller (Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Conn., 1971, 113 pages) provides at last a full and well-documented account of this Quaker pioneer against racism in education. * * * Louisa, Memories of a Quaker Childhood, edited by Evelyn Roberts (London, Friends Home Service Committee, 1970, 53 pages), is an illustrated pamphlet or "Quakerback" dealing with the vivid memories of Louisa Hooper, 1818-1918, related when ninety-nine years old, to a grandchild. England and Quakerism were quite a bit quainter in the days before 1836 to which these reminiscences apply. * * * "The Civil War Diaries of Anna M. Ferris" were edited by Harold B. Hancock and published in Delaware History, IX (April, 1961), 221-264. The writer was a Friend with many Quaker contacts. She is called "a strong Republican and deeply interested in military affairs," and her observations "colorfully and sharply written." The original manuscripts are some at Swarthmore College and some at the Historical Society of Delaware. Frederick J. Wagner contributes to the Bulletin of Bibliography, XXVIII (1971), 84-87, 118, 141-144 an extensive bibliography on the Quaker-born novelist J. H. Shorthouse (1834-1903). He was baptized into the Church of England in 1861. His best known novel, John Inglesant, was published in 1887. 128QUAKER HISTORY In Pennsylvania History, XXXIX (1972), 1-19, Edward J. Cody tells the story of the early Pennsylvania Quaker controversy: "The Price of Perfection: The Irony of George Keith." The familiar features seem to the author to illustrate the self-defeating character of religious aims like those of the Quakers. They found...