The Rise of Methodism: A Study of Bedfordshire, 1736-1851

This radical re-examination of the rise of early nineteenth-century Britain's largest popular movement draws on a wide range of evidence to give a bottom-up account of the growth, life and impact of early Methodism in the unlikelystronghold of Bedfordshire. The study digs beneath the seemingly steady advance portrayed by official membership statistics to uncover a much more unstable and rapidly changing picture in which different generations and social groups appropriated the religious structures of the movement as vehicles to express a wide variety of aspirations and grievances.

JONATHAN RODELL read history at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was a Visiting Fellow at Southern Methodist University, Dallas and now teaches for Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education.