Complete Works of Edward Burrough, Volume 4
Burrough's epistles to Friends — the pastoral letters in which the thundering controversialist reveals his gentler face, nurturing the gathered communities of Quakers who looked to him for guidance and encouragement.
- Volume 4 of 7
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read3 hours
- Length43,141 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 3 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 3 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 2.4 hours to 4.1 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 41,635 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 1,506 words |
| Total | 43,141 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 1,506 of the 43,141 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
2.4 hours and 4.1 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 3 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 123–173 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
The same man who challenged Oliver Cromwell in public also wrote tender letters of pastoral care to the small meetings of Friends scattered across England and Ireland. This fourth volume collects Burrough’s epistles to Friends — writings in which we see a different register of his genius. The urgency is still there, but it is now directed inward: toward steadfastness in suffering, faithfulness in the Light, the nurturing of genuine community. Burrough knew that the movement could not survive on controversy alone; it needed roots.
These letters address the practical challenges of early Quaker life: how to hold meeting in the face of persecution, how to handle disunity within the gathered community, how to maintain the freshness of spiritual experience against the tendency of all religious movements to harden into form. Burrough’s pastoral wisdom proves surprisingly durable. This edition presents these letters in a form that makes their spiritual counsel immediately accessible.
