Reviews This is an excellent, multi-layered, subtle and innovative reading of religious culture in the long eighteenth century. It points the way to the development of religious history/literary criticism, and will become a key text for our understanding not only of Methodism but of the ways in which religious discourse might be contextualised and read as part of larger cultural shifts. Dr Felicity James, Associate Professor in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Leicester 'One of the more broadly appealing achievements of this book is to map the ways in which eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Methodist women, in their fascinating publishing practices, illuminating editorial experiences, and in the very ideas and expression of their writing, resisted, adopted, and variously navigated their way around a proper and regulated discursive space for womens enthusiastic religion in British life'. Fiona Macdonald, Wesley and Methodist Studies ....Winckles writes about both womens writing and Methodism with learning and ease. His thesis builds on other recentindeed, pioneeringscholarship on dissenting women in the period by deepening that scholarly trajectory through careful manuscript work in overlooked archival sources, especially in the burgeoning field of life writing.
Jeffrey W. Barbeau, Women's Writing This volumes reassessment of Methodist media through manuscript culture, womens life-writing and scribal publication a vibrant interdisciplinary paradigm sharpens our understanding of the romantic world, elevates figures who have languished for far too long, and continues to decenter and redefine our understanding of romanticisms in unpredictable and exciting ways.
Elizabeth Bishop, Romantic Circles While the mainstream Methodism of the nineteenth century slowed down the Methodist media revolution, Winckless rigor and enthusiasm revives it.
Rebecca Nesvet, ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 'Winckles [ ...] uses Methodist womens manuscript circulation to overhaul the field of Romanticism. [ ...] Winckless ambitious argument and thoroughly researched conclusions are mesmerizingly provocative. [ ...] One of the very welcome contributions Winckles makes to the field of long eighteenth-century womens writing is his insistence on the value of recovering very specifically the life-writing of religious women [ ...] showing how vibrant and diverse the theological differentiation among members of a given religious community could be. [ ...] a sea change has occurred in the scholarly recognition of the deep resonances and complications among religious networks, eighteenth-century literature, and global feminism.'Samara Cahill, Eighteenth Century Fiction
