A Short Journal of the Labours and Travels of Deborah Bell
The travelling journal of Deborah Bell (1689–1738) — convinced young, called to the ministry in 1708, and thereafter carried on foot and horseback through England, Scotland, Wales, and repeatedly to Ireland over three decades. Plain, exact, and full of the everyday texture of an itinerant minister's life, it is framed by a biographical preface and the tender testimony of her husband to her ministry, her character, and her death. A modern English edition with linked scripture and historical references.
- Thirty years of ministering travels through Britain and Ireland
- Includes her husband's testimony to her ministry, character, and death
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read1.6 hours
- Length23,091 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 1.6 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 1.6 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 1.3 hours to 2.2 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 19,386 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 3,705 words |
| Total | 23,091 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 3,705 of the 23,091 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
1.3 hours and 2.2 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 1.6 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 66–92 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.
- Secure checkout by Stripe
- Instant download
- 7-day money-back guarantee
About This Edition
Deborah Bell (born Deborah Winn in 1689) was convinced of Quaker truth as a young woman and came into the work of the ministry in 1708. Her short journal — published in 1762, a quarter-century after her death — is a plain and steady record of the labours and travels that filled the next thirty years of her life.
The journal proper opens with her first journeys in 1707 and her call to the ministry the following year, then follows her north to Scotland in 1709, through Wales around the time of her marriage in 1710–1711, and into the southern counties before her removal to London. From there she crossed repeatedly to Ireland between 1715 and 1720, and continued travelling in later visits as far as 1737, the year before her death. Woven among the journeys are her letters on women’s preaching and the way of Truth — a quiet, well-grounded defense of her own calling.
The volume is framed by others’ words as well as her own: a biographical preface sets the outward facts in order, and her husband’s testimony bears witness to the character of her ministry and gives a moving account of her last illness and death in 1738. Together they preserve the portrait of a faithful public Friend whose service was measured not in drama but in miles and meetings and unwearied constancy.
This edition gently modernizes Bell’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 her plain speech and the sober directness 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 travels linked to encyclopedic articles.
