The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman. Edited by Phillips P. Moulton. New York: Oxford University Press. 1971. 336 pages. $10.50. John Woolman's Journal is but one of many accounts by the early American Quakers of their own "Life, Travels and Gospel Labors," but it is the only one which has been accepted, ever since its first publication in 1774, as a literary classic. An unswerving dedication to the Quaker ideal of direct communication with Truth through intuition as an operational way of life, an aching compassion for the poor and the oppressed, and a style of almost lyrical intensity have combined to single it out from all other works of its genre. It has seldom if ever been out of print in the two centuries that followed. The Whittier edition of 1871 is in most libraries and there have been two recent editions based on fresh study of the manuscripts: the Gummere and the Whitney. Why then another edition now? Mr. Moulton has presented a convincing "rationale" for his edition in an appendix (pp. 273-282). This is the first edition to offer a modernized text based on a thorough restudy of the many manuscripts that have survived from Woolman's habit of copying and altering parts of his text; and it was developed in harmony with both the method of the Harvard Guide to American History, as adopted in the Yale edition of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, and with a modified version of the "copy-text" method of the Center for Editions of American Authors of the Modern Language Association . At die heart of the Woolman textual problem is the existence of two nearly complete manuscripts, together with many fragments. The 1774 editors accepted MS B as Woolman's final version and printed it, with editorial emendations of their own approved at that time but questioned today. Mrs. Gummere went back to MS A as "copy-text" (which is correct CEAA procedure), as did Mrs. Whitney, but for the wrong reasons; and as neither was a trained textual scholar, they were both inconsistent in the changes they incorporated from other manuscripts or unrecorded sources. Mr. Moulton has apparently taken MS B for "copy-text," but has incorporated into it all readings which could be identified as Woolman's own final choices, and has eliminated many errors from previous editions. Although differing in detail from CEAA procedure, the result is approximately the one approved: i.e., the production of a composite text which best represents the author's intention by collation of all versions attributable to him. In preparing his text for the press, Mr. Moulton has followed the far more liberal policy of the modern historians, feeling free to alter and modernize "accidentals" of spelling and punctuation silently and to account for his textual decisions in footnotes (he supplies no full "textual notes") only when they seem to involve debatable interpretations. This compromise should be satisfactory to most scholars because it is consistent and is fully explained, while serving the needs of the modern reader for a clear text, unencumbered by editorial paraphernalia. One can now read the Journal 123 124QUAKER HISTORY and the more important essays on poverty and slavery with reasonable confidence that he is hearing John Woolman speak to the issues of 1972 as he did to those of 1774. University of PennsylvaniaRobert E. Spjller John Perrot, Early Quaker Schismatic. By Kenneth L. Garroll. Supplement No. 33 to the Journal of the Friends' Historical Society. London, 1971. 116 pages. This substantial monograph is a natural by-product of the author's interests in Quaker history in early America, since John Perrot, an Irish Friend, endured the vicissitudes of his later life in the American colonies, besides his original career in die British Isles and in die trek of Friends towards Italy and the Middle East in the second decade of Quakerism. Like other Friends of the period John Perrot was a deviationist from mainline Quakerism, differing chiefly in minor matters of Friends practice— the best known of his nonconformity to the usual practice being in the small matter of not removing his hat during vocal prayer. His aberrations followed...