Brandishing their Grey Goose Quills: The Struggle to Publish an Official Life of John Wesley, 1791–1805

When John Wesley died in 1791, everyone knew that his official biography would be a bestseller. But early confusion over whom Wesley intended to safeguard his property and take possession of his personal papers led to a protracted struggle over who ought to have the sanctioned right to interpret Wesley’s long life to the wider reading public. This paper argues that as the dispute over Wesley’s biography intensified among his followers, the themes and language that emerged helped to prepare the ground to later conflicts and schisms between preachers and people that would define Methodist history for decades to come.