In 1685, Fox asked that ‘ye great Jornall of my Life, Sufferings, Travills and Imprisonments they may bee put together that Lye in papers and ye Little Jornall Books they may bee printed together in a Book’.¹ In 1692, a year after Fox’s death, the Second Day Morning Meeting set up an editorial committee charged with following Fox’s instructions and seeing the first edition of the Journal into print. It appeared in 1694, transcribed and edited by Thomas Ellwood.

      Ellwood (1639-1714)² was an obvious choice for editor. He had been Latin reader to Milton,³ with breaks for imprisonment for his Quakerism. He transcribed and edited Fox’s papers for the press, combining those items ‘that Lye in papers’ (a good description of what was to become the Spence manuscript?) with ‘ye Little Jornall Books’. One of these was presumably the Short Journal. Others could have been his account of the voyage to the West Indies and America, and other Itinerary Journals. There is a debate whether his main copy text was Spence or another, ghost volume christened ‘The Great Journal’, but no real evidence has been produced for the latter.

      Ellwood edited as well as transcribing. His version was also regularly supervised by the Morning Meeting. The result was to tidy up Fox's original text into something that would not sound so ‘uncouth and unfashionable to nice ears’, as Penn describes Fox's style in his preface to the 1694 edition. Ellwood converts Fox's oral style into something more literary; he also clarifies references to people and places which would not be obvious to the general public, and censors some references which might lead to misunderstanding or possible scandal, or which were simply out of date. Even after the first printing in 1694, it was decided to alter a rather sensational passage provided by Ellen Fretwell, a Derbyshire Friend, in the account of her persecution by a local Justice in 1666 [page 309], and replacement pages were supplied for volumes which had not yet gone out.

1.    The Journal of George Fox edited Norman Penney, 2 vols (Cambridge University Press, 1911), 2 347-8.        Return

2.    For a brief biography of Ellwood, see http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Thomas_Ellwood.        Return

3.    Ellwood 'went every day in the afternoon, except on the first days of the week, and sitting by him in his dining-room read to him (Milton) in such books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to hear me read’. See Ellwood's Life at www.gutenberg.org/etext/6925.        Return