The Life of Edward Burrough

Charles Evans wrote this biography of Edward Burrough with the thoroughness and affection of a scholar who had spent years inside the Quaker documentary record. The Life of Edward Burrough gives a full account of Burrough’s origins in Westmorland, his encounter with George Fox at the age of seventeen, and his rapid emergence as one of the most powerful preachers and writers the movement produced. Evans draws on Burrough’s own writings, the writings of his contemporaries, and the historical records of the period to reconstruct a life that was remarkable in its intensity and brief in its span.

This companion volume is designed to be read alongside the seven volumes of Burrough’s collected works. It provides the context that Burrough himself rarely supplies — the narrative thread that connects individual tracts and letters to the events that prompted them, the relationships with Fox and other early Friends that shaped his thinking, and the story of his imprisonment and death that gives the whole corpus its tragic gravity. For readers new to Burrough, this biography is an ideal starting point.