John Woolman (review)

56Quaker History support. Through successive stages an essentially Quaker institution serving a generally local and largely agricultural community became interdenominational and progressively secular in an expanding and ever more industrialized society. Sometimes a subject nominates its author, and when it is permitted so to do the outcome can be felicitous. Few will doubt that Charles Cooper was the logical person to write this book. His long association with the College as student and teacher, his sensitivityto the human values involved in the kaleidoscopicpanorama which he is portraying, his ability to be at the same time sympathetic and just in the handling of controversial issues, not to mention his enviable command of the English language, a talent not vouchsafed to all professors of English, combine to make this a sound and readable account. For those for whom, as for the present reviewer, much of this story has deep personal meaning, its fascination will be accordingly enhanced. University of PennsylvaniaLeónidas Dodson John Woolman. By Paul Rosenblatt. United States Authors Series. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1969. 163 pages. $4.50. This is a good exposition of the life and thought of Woolman, based on his works and the biographies of Amelia Mott Gummere and Janet Whitney. The author draws skillfully upon the writings of George Fox and William Penn to place Woolman in the context of Quakerism. Particular attention is given to literary aspects of Woolman's Journal and to comparing and contrasting him with his contemporaries Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin. The relationship of his style and ideas to those of Augustine, the Transcendentalists, and Walt Whitman are also perceptively portrayed. The author includes helpful summaries of Woolman's major essays and a good section on Woolman's educational philosophy. The annotated bibliography is quite useful in calling attention to books and essays other than those to which writers on Woolman generally refer. Of major value is the author's recognition and treatment of the esthetic aspect of Woolman's philosophy, which stresses the harmony of the universe and the design of its creator. Even Woolman's asceticism is seen to have an esthetic element. The author shows how Woolman's life style exemplified the "law of omission" expressed by Robert Louis Stevenson and developed by William James. Harmony and creativity are perceived as the fruit of judicious omission of discordant and negative life experiences for the sake of purity and consistency. Recognizing the lack of an accurate, critical edition of Woolman's works, the author rightly chose the Gummere version as the best one available. But he would have done better to refer directly to the holographs. In professing (p. 13) to have "maintained . . . Woolman's spelling and punctuation," the author seems unaware that while Mrs. Gummere intended to follow Woolman in these respects, Book Reviews57 she did not consistently do so. Consequently the author (following Mrs. Gummere ) has not done so. He is also misled by Mrs. Gummere in stating (p. 38) that Woolman's marriage is "noted only as an afterthought in the final folio." Actually Woolman noted it in the preliminary holograph, which Mrs. Gummere mistook for his final one. On p. 84 the author refers to A Pleafor the Poor as consisting of twelve sections. At this point he was led astray by some other edition, as the Gummere edition is one of the two which contains all sixteen sections. An error appears on p. 136, where the London Yearly Meeting is said to have taken its first public notice of slavery in 1772; actually it issued an indictment of the slave trade in 1758. A misinterpretation of Woolman's Journal is found on p. 45. As evidence of the progress made by the Virginia Yearly Meeting of 1757, Woolman referred to the query: "Are there any concerned in the importation of Negroes or buying them to trade in?" rather than to the query about prize goods, which the meeting did not apply to the slave trade. At least ten minor errors slipped by the proofreader of the present volume, including the date 1766 (p. 28), and the substitution of "protest" for "profession" in a quotation from William James (p. 131). While these minor imperfections should...