Some Account of Mary Alexander
Mary Alexander was born at Needham Market in Suffolk in 1760 and died at Needham in 1809, and this is the record she kept of a ministry that took her over most of England and into Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man. She began writing in the eleventh month of 1798, when she was thirty-eight, looking back over the years in which she had felt a gift she was afraid to own and had waited a long time before speaking. What she set down is unusually inward for a travelling journal: the fear of running before her Guide, the dread of the family visit, the flatness that followed a meeting she thought had gone well. The journeys are all here — the visiting of families through Norwich, a letter written to a Friend imprisoned for tithes, two journeys into Wales and the sickness that stopped her at Cirencester, the midland counties in company with Elizabeth Coggeshall of Newport in Rhode Island, Surrey and Sussex and Hampshire, the long prospect of Scotland that she carried for years before she could move in it, Whitehaven and the Isle of Man, Douglas and Cumberland, Hawick north to Aberdeen and home again by Newcastle, and London and Middlesex. Her own record breaks off unfinished; the editor's supplement carries her through her last journey, her illness and her death.
- Fully modernized English — every long sentence broken, every inversion untangled
- 1,649-word editorial introduction placing her ministry in context
- 20 chapters plus a full linked table of contents
- The editor's preface, the testimony concerning her mother Martha Alexander, and the supplement on her last journey and decease
- 323 linked Scripture and reference notes throughout
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read2.8 hours
- Length40,558 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 2.8 hours
This figure is here so you can compare one book against another. Every title on the site is timed from its own word count at the same reading speed — nothing is adjusted book by book — so if this edition says 2.8 hours and another says half that, the second one really is about half the reading. It is a measure of size, in the way a page count is. Your own pace is your own: at the speeds typical adult readers actually manage, this edition runs anywhere from 2.3 hours to 3.9 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 38,950 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 1,608 words |
| Total | 40,558 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 1,608 of the 40,558 words above, and they are part of what you are buying.
Counted from the text of the EPUB you receive. Navigation, the title page, the table of contents and the licence page are excluded — they are packaging, not reading.
The reading rate
238 words per minute, for adult silent reading of non-fiction, applied unchanged to every title on the site. We did not pick the number; it is the pooled result of a published meta-analysis. Nothing is adjusted book by book — that consistency is what makes two of these figures worth comparing.
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
190 studies, 18,573 participants.
The same paper puts most adult readers between 175 and
300 words per minute, and those two speeds give the
2.3 hours and 3.9 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 2.8 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 116–162 pages.
Words per printed page is a typesetting convention, not a measurement — it moves with trim size, type size and leading. The range above assumes 250–350 words a page. Friends Illuminated publishes no print edition of this book; the figure is here only because pages are a more familiar size than words.
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About This Edition
She was born at Needham Market in Suffolk in 1760, the daughter of Dykes and Martha Alexander, and she died at Needham in 1809. Between those dates she travelled in the ministry over most of England, twice into Wales, through Scotland as far as Aberdeen, and across to the Isle of Man.
A gift she was afraid to own
She began this account in the eleventh month of 1798, at thirty-eight, writing backward over the years in which she had felt something required of her and had not dared to speak. That reluctance is the spine of the book. She is exact about the fear of running before her Guide, about the dread that came over her when a family visit was proposed, and about the flatness that could follow a meeting she had thought went well.
The journeys
The visiting of families through Norwich; a letter written to a Friend imprisoned for tithes; two journeys into Wales, the second broken by the sickness that stopped her at Cirencester; the midland counties in company with Elizabeth Coggeshall of Newport in Rhode Island; Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire; the prospect of Scotland that she carried for years before she could move in it; Whitehaven and the passage to the Isle of Man; Douglas and Cumberland; Hawick north to Aberdeen and home again by Newcastle; and London and Middlesex.
The ending
Her own record breaks off unfinished. The editor’s supplement carries her through her last journey, her illness and her decease, and the volume opens with the editor’s preface and a testimony concerning her mother, Martha Alexander.
About this edition
Every sentence has been rebuilt for a modern reader. Her vocabulary of conviction — Truth, the Seed, First-day, the numbered months — is bracketed on first use and then left alone, because translating it would translate her out of the book. Three hundred and twenty-three Scripture and reference links are set into the text; every Scripture reference was checked against the King James text rather than recalled, and every person and place link was checked by hand against the surrounding prose and verified to resolve.
