Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The managed heart: educating the emotions in Methodist discourse; 2. 'Out of the paw of the lion': first conversion; 3. Men of feeling: natural and spiritual affection in the lives of the preachers; 4. Women in love: Eros and piety in the minds of Methodist women; 5. Mary Fletcher on the cross: gender and the suffering body; 6. Agency and the unconscious: the Methodist culture of dreaming; 7. Methodism and modernity.

Promotional Information

A fascinating account of the daily life and spirituality of early Methodists by a prize-winning gender historian.

About the Author

Phyllis Mack is Professor of History and Women's Studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Her previous publications include Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544-1569 (1978) and Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in 17th Century England (1992).

Reviews

Review of the hardback: 'This is an important revisionist study that will necessitate a re-evaluation of the eighteenth century development of Methodism and an expression of its dynamism.' The Historical Association

Review of the hardback: '… for the general reader this is a well-presented and brilliant book. I commend it heartily.' The Methodist Recorder

Review of the hardback: 'What this book offers most significantly is a discursive, rather than merely descriptive, framework for understanding and interpreting the religious experience of women. … It is an important treatment of women's religious experiences in post-Enlightenment Western society.' The Catholic Historical Review

Review of the hardback: 'Mack's Heart Religion [in the British Enlightenment], whether read singly or in interrogative tandem with her earlier Visionary Women, is a challenging and thought‐provoking book. It prompts the reader to question the very basis upon which the historical interaction of religion, gender, and wider cultural trends can be written as well as offering insightful interpretations of the experience and culture of early Methodism.' American Historical Review

'Mack's new study seeks to treat its emotional character seriously, and, by emphasising the relationship that her many diarists, letter writers and poets had with the self, she adds to a case currently being made by religious historians for regarding Methodism as a creed that had a close connection with enlightenment thought.' Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature

'… a path-breaking work of meticulous scholarship and shrewd analysis.' Bruce Hindmarsh, Books and Culture