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 unlikely stronghold 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.