The Papers of William Penn, Volume One: 1644-1679 (review)

126Quaker History as readable as Nat Hentoff's Peace Agitator, but it is much more thorough. His activities are discussed under five categories: religion, labor, civil liberties , civil rights and pacifism. It is a work which all those who knew A.J. will want to read. Perhaps the title is a little forced, and the summing up of A.J.'s influence a bit underplayed, but those are minor flaws. This is a significant biography of a person who never made Who's Who, but whose contributions will loom large in our history if and when war becomes as anachronistic as slavery is today. The lives of people like A. J. Muste provide a spark of sanity and light during an era of darkness and violence. Without his example the recent past would be much bleaker. Wilmington CollegeLarry Gara The Papers of William Penn, Volume One: 1644-1679. Editors Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn. Associate Editors Richard A. Ryerson and Scott M. Wilds. Assistant Editor Jean R. Soderlund. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. xv + 703 pages. $22.50. Probably no seventeenth-century colonial figure, and few seventeenthcentury Englishmen, led as interesting and multifaceted a life as William Penn; certainly none left behind either more significant correspondence or a more varied set of writings. Yet both his correspondence and his writings, with the exception of a few tracts, have been available largely only in manuscript form or in the 1726 edition by Joseph Besse of many of his works and a small amount of his correspondence, or in the nineteenthcentury selections from this edition. The volume under review, the first of four plus a bibliographical publication, is a monumental step toward rectifying this unfortunate situation. About 2600 Penn papers survive in addition to his major published writtings ; 2500 of them are available in a microfilm edition published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1975. With the publication of this volume, Mary Maples and Richard Dunn and their associates initiate a series that will include one-quarter of the Penn papers in their precise original form and with copious footnotes. This first volume includes 157 of the 323 documents extant for the period 1644 to 1679, one-quarter of these from Penn's Letterbook of 1667-1675, located in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Sections include from six to thirty-seven documents each and are entitled The Early Years, 1644-1665; In Ireland, 1666-67; The Young Quaker Controversialist, 1668-1669; The Irish Journal, 1669-1670; In Ireland, 1669-1670; In Newgate, 1670-1671; Settling Down, 1671-1674; Working With George Fox, 1674-1677; Proprietor in New Jersey, 16751676 ; In Holland and Germany, 1677; The Whig Politician, 1677-1679; and an Appendix including William Penn's Business Records (for the period), a Calendar of Microfilmed WP Documents, and a Calendar of Documents not Filmed. Also included are a variety of maps, a portrait of Penn, and endpapers providing a sampling of his writing. Within each section we find documents illustrating major facets of Penn's life for the period covered with some attempt to cluster documents around a theme. The criteria of selection include the intent to illustrate his major beliefs and actions and to provide a cross section of his correspondents. Better qualified editors could not have been found, and they have done Book Reviews127 a superb job of deciphering and comparing manuscripts, of selecting those that provide the most insight into Penn and his times, and of providing copious and comprehensive footnotes identifying people referred to (often by initials only), theological terms, and other obscure references. In the case of documents previously printed we are sometimes provided with the first printed version taken verbatim from the best manuscript or manuscripts , as document 119, "An Account of my Journey into Holland and Germany." All of the documents are presented precisely in the form in which they are found in the manuscript, including abbreviations, interlinear emendations, lined-out phrases, and other peculiar marks. Although an extraordinary amount of work has been done for the footnotes, the remarks on Penn's and Friends' ecclesiastical activity (see document 103, a letter to Friends), on the political documents and activities (see...