Abstract

Quaker studies is a disparate and varied field. Like many a new area of research it suffers from a lack of contact between researchers and the inability of all but a select few to make a career in the field. As a consequence, excellent work may go unnoticed and unreported because the individual author is not part of any national association or academic network or because the absence of scholarly interest in the field means that many texts are published by small presses and come to light only in the rarefied atmosphere of Friends House book shop. The mission of Quaker Studies to provide a forum for new scholarship, and to keep our readers in touch with the work done in other disciplines. As part of this mission we hope in the future to publish an annual critical essay which will offer a round up of the years work in Quaker studies. However, it will not be the policy of this section to review substantially unrevised new editions, so although, for example, Larry Ingle's Quakers in Conflict (Ingle 1998) is a welcome reprint, it . will not be considered as part of the recent output in Quaker studies. This year we have chosen to begin with a retrospective of some of the more interesting work available while at the same time considering some of the issues which face the discipline.

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