Historical Background: The 18th Century

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ical insights are to be found largely in secular works.
The issue of women’s preaching is no longer such a shocking one. Boswell in 1763 still finds it worthy of note, eliciting the notorious Johnsonian reply: "Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."4 It is around this time that Margaret Lucas writes of her initial aversion to women’s preaching. But we no longer find women debating with their detractors as Elizabeth Stirredge and Joan Vokins had a century before. For the most part the Quaker women preachers go about their business matter-of-factly.
Other sects, too, produced a small body of autobiographical writings. A little group of Scottish Covenanters are represented by Marion Fairly Veitch and Elizabeth Cairns. Later in the century, the Methodists turned out a number of autobiographies. Stauffer writes,
What the Quakers accomplished during the first half of the century, the Methodists carried on during the second half, largely throug...