A response to the prominent Methodist historian David Hempton's call to analyse women's experience within Methodism, this book is the first to deal with British Methodist women preachers over the entire nineteenth century.

The author covers women preachers in Wesley's lifetime, the reason why some Methodist sects allowed women to preach and others did not, and the experience of Bible Christian and Primitive Methodist female evangelists before 1850. She also describes the many other ways in which women supported their chapel communities.

The book also includes discussion of the careers of mid-century women revivalists, the opportunities home and foreign missions offered for female evangelism, the emergence of deaconess evangelists and Sisters of the People in late century, and the brief revival of female itinerancy among the Bible Christians.

Reviews

Lloyd gives a detailed and complex account of the nineteenth century, successfully combining theory and specific narrative ... each chapter interweaves narrative and lively detail with analysis and theoretical reflection ... this is an exciting book, readable as well as scholarly ... the theoretical analysis, while setting a standard, also raises questions ... which should inspire others to continue exploration.
Margaret Jones, Wesley and Methodist Studies, 4 2012

List of figures
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Women in eighteenth-century Methodism
2. Women preachers' place in a divided Methodism
3. The heyday of female itinerancy
4. Philanthropists, volunteers, fund-raisers and local preachers
5. Women as revivalists
6. Women in missions at home and abroad
7. Deaconesses, Sisters of the People and the revival of female itinerancy
Afterword
Bibliography
Index