This issue is the first to be published directly with Open Library of Humanities, who previously financially supported our relationship with Liverpool University Press and is now hosting us on their own system. The change has meant a considerable amount of extra work for the editorial team and others, and we would like to thank the technical and support teams at Open Library of Humanities for their help, all our authors for their patience with this process, and especially Pat O’Donnell for volunteering to join our team as a copy editor.

In future, all submissions to the journal should be submitted through the new website here: https://quakerstudies.openlibhums.org/. This new online submission system will make managing the peer review and publication process easier for everyone, and we look forward to this new stage of the journal’s life. Remaining fully open access is important to us, to make sure Quaker Studies is available to all researchers, and we welcome submissions from university-based and independent scholars around the world. Whilst this issue is mainly historical in focus, the journal is expressly interdisciplinary and we also welcome sociological, theological, psychological, and many other approaches to the study of Quakers past and present. We welcome enquiries about individual pieces, such as articles and research notes, and also broader ideas, such as pitches for special issues.

In this summer issue we are pleased to present four research articles, three research notes, and four book reviews. The research articles include two about the early twentieth century, one on the eighteenth century, and one about the seventeenth century. Tammy Proctor’s article on British Quakers and the First World War in Vienna considers how relief programmes defined their limits and especially how they decided when and where to end: Hilda Clark’s unit needed to leave Vienna after the 1918 Armistice, but rich primary sources reveal the struggles involved in making decisions about the reality of this. Martin Crick’s article on the campaign against compulsory military training in New Zealand fills in gaps in a historical record that often focusses on Australia, highlighting the connections with British Quakers, the importance of Quaker involvement in the campaign, and the effects this work had on the Quaker community in New Zealand. Elizabeth Bouldin’s article looks at the poetry writing of female Friends of all ages in the eighteenth century, showing how widespread practices of verse composition and circulation through letters, diaries, copybooks, samplers, and other formats connected them to their religious community. Euan McArthur’s article on George Fox the Younger assesses this lesser-known figure as a conservative voice who worked to address incoherence in the movement. McArthur offers a clearer understanding of the ways in which this early movement was both politically radical but also willing to accept many existing social and political hierarchies.

The three research notes form a group. Euan McArthur’s note on two early Quaker pamphlets from the East of England brings scholarly attention to this less researched area, transcribes a previously unpublished pamphlet, and sheds light on the relationships between Quakers and their critics. Stephen Angell’s note on the library of Giles Firmin, the author of an early anti-Quaker tract, reveals which Quaker authors were being read in that particular time and place – highlighting the significance of James Nayler and James Parnell. Noting the close relationships between these contributors, the editors invited McArthur and Angell to collaborate on a third research note for this issue, which takes the form of a correspondence between the two authors and explores the roles of region, gender, family, print culture, and radical Puritanism in this area of research.

The four book reviews also cover themes of writing, print culture, and gender. The books reviewed are: Rachel Cope and Zachary McLeod Hutchins (eds), The Writings of Elizabeth Webb: A Quaker Missionary in America, 1697–1726; Sally Jeffery, Dissenting Printers: The Intractable Men and Women of a Seventeenth-Century Quaker Press; Kacey Dowd Tillman, Stripped and Script: Loyalist Women Writers of the American Revolution; and Carolina Fernandez Rodriguez, American Quaker Romances: Building the Myth of the White Christian Nation. Thanks to our book reviews editor, Erica Canela, for organising these reviews, and to Erin Bell, Rosalind Johnson, and Katy Telling for their reading, time, and insights in writing the reviews.

This year, 2024, is the 400^th anniversary of the birth of George Fox, a significant leader in the early Quaker movement. The milestone has encouraged many organisations, both in the Quaker community and in the world of academic Quaker studies, to organise events marking the occasion. These include our own special issue, coming in winter 2024, which will focus on Fox and his legacy. There is also the joint event co-organised by the Quaker Studies Research Association, the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists, and the Centre for Research in Quaker Studies at Woodbrooke, which will be held in Lancaster and online in June 2024. The conference includes the George Richardson lecture, delivered by Nigel Smith, William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature at Princeton. We look forward to publishing the text in a future issue.