Some Account of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge
The autobiography of Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713–1755) — a runaway marriage at fourteen, a widow at fifteen, kidnapped and sold into indentured servitude in New York, and delivered at last through a dream and the plain preaching of Friends. Few early Quaker narratives are so dramatic or so unflinchingly honest about suffering, doubt, and the wrath of an unbelieving husband. Written by herself, with two contemporary testimonies appended. A modern English edition with linked scripture and historical references.
- A dramatic autobiography of elopement, indenture, and hard-won faith
- One of the most vivid conversion narratives in early Quaker literature
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read1.2 hours
- Length17,267 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 1.2 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 1.2 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 58 minutes to 1.6 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 12,736 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 4,531 words |
| Total | 17,267 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 4,531 of the 17,267 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
58 minutes and 1.6 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 1.2 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 49–69 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
Elizabeth Ashbridge was born in 1713 in Cheshire, England, and her life reads like a novel of the age. A reckless elopement at fourteen left her a widow within months. Cast out by her father, she made her way to Ireland and then, lured by a deceiving recruiter, took ship for America — only to be kidnapped on arrival and sold into three years of indentured servitude under a cruel master in New York.
Through all of it she was a seeker. She had felt the pull of religion since her mother’s early teaching; she was tempted toward Rome, endured a master’s hollow piety, and wrestled with despair over eternity. The turning came through a dream of a lamp and her first sight of Friends among her Quaker kindred in Pennsylvania. Convinced at last, she then had to carry that new faith home to a second husband who despised it — and the chapters on his wrath, the refused dance, and her steady taking-up of the plough of her testimony are among the most affecting in early Quaker writing.
Ashbridge became a minister and died in 1755 on a religious visit to Ireland. This volume gathers her own narrative, “written by herself,” together with the account left by her husband and the testimony of Friends in Ireland who knew her at the end.
This edition gently modernizes Ashbridge’s eighteenth-century prose for present-day readers: spelling and punctuation brought into present usage, the archaic verb forms lightened, and the longest run-on sentences divided for clarity — while the urgency and candour of her voice remain her own. Scripture references have been added and linked to the King James text, and the persons, places, and events behind the story linked to encyclopedic articles.
