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Module Women's Studies
Title The Life of Mary Dudley, including an Account of Her Religious Engagements and Extracts from Her Letters, with an Appendix Containing Some Account of the Illness and Death of Her Daughter Hannah Dudley
Collection Women's Autobiographies
Author Dudley, Mary (née Stokes)
Date 1825
Library Cambridge University Library
Copyright Material sourced from Cambridge University Library
Original Microfilm Part Part 1: Rare printed autobiographies covering thirty-three womens lives, 1713-1859
Original Microfilm Reel 4
Detailed Description The autobiography of Mary Dudley (1750-1823) covers her life from childhood, through religious conversions from Anglicanism to Methodism to Quakerism, and her travels as an itinerant Quaker missionary. As a child she has a liking for 'vain amusements'. At age 20 she is shocked out of her vanity by the death of her grandmother, and the realisation of the brevity of life. At this time she begins looking for communion with God, and joins the Methodists, then the Society of Friends, and in 1773 joins the Quakers travelling as a missionary. Leaving her husband and seven children at home she travels through Ireland, England, Scotland and the Channel Islands, and to Europe where she preached to Anabaptist and Moravian congregations. The text contains the author's memoirs, letters and diary extracts, together with the editor's biographical notes. The work offers a richness as a day-to-day journal documenting the growth of Quaker missionary activities in the 18th and 19th centuries.