The Life of Mary Neale
She was Mary Peisley for very nearly the whole of her life, and Mary Neale for three days. Born at Ballymore in the county of Kildare in 1717, she was brought up among Friends and, by her own unsparing account, spent her youth in what she called vanity and stupidity. A fall from her horse and the silence of two Friends who came to sit with her turned her. She was recorded a minister, travelled the meetings of Ireland, and in 1748 and 1749 went through England and Wales, where she wrote plainly and unpopularly of the declension she found among Friends there. In 1753 she sailed for America with Catharine Payton and gave three years to that service — Charlestown and the Carolinas, Maryland, the epistle from West River, New England and the northern provinces, and Philadelphia in the first years of the French and Indian War, where the question of war taxes was splitting the meeting. She came home to Ireland in 1756 with her health broken. On the seventeenth of third month 1757, at Mountrath, she married Samuel Neale. Three days later she was dead, and her friends published her under the name she had barely worn. This edition gathers her journal, her letters and the testimonies concerning her, in clear modern English.
- Fully modernized English — every long sentence broken, every inversion untangled
- 1,883-word editorial introduction on the ministry, the American journey and the three-day marriage
- Twenty chapters plus the compiler's preface and the testimonies concerning her
- Her journal and her letters, including the epistle from West River
- 246 linked Scripture and reference notes, every verse checked against the King James text
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read3.3 hours
- Length47,717 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 3.3 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 3.3 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 2.7 hours to 4.5 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 45,881 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 1,836 words |
| Total | 47,717 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 1,836 of the 47,717 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
2.7 hours and 4.5 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 3.3 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 136–191 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
The book is called The Life of Mary Neale, and she bore that name for seventy-two hours. Every page of it was written by, or about, Mary Peisley. Her friends could not bring themselves to publish her under the name she had gone by all her life, because the last act of that life had been to take another one. So the book carries a name she barely wore, over a life lived almost entirely without it.
Ballymore
She was born in 1717 at Ballymore in the county of Kildare, daughter of Peter and Rachel Peisley, and brought up among Friends. It did not take. She is the harshest witness against herself in these pages: she spent her youth, she says, in vanity and stupidity, sat under a living ministry and slighted it. What turned her was a fall from her horse and two Friends who came and sat with her in silence.
Ireland, England, and an unpopular judgement
Recorded a minister, she travelled the meetings of Ireland, and in 1748 and 1749 went through England and Wales. What she wrote home about the state of Friends there is some of the plainest material in the book, and it did not make her popular. She belonged to the small Ballitore circle around Richard and Elizabeth Shackleton, Samuel Neale, Elizabeth Pike and Elizabeth Carleton — young Friends who held each other to a standard they thought had slipped.
America, 1753–1756
In 1753 she sailed with Catharine Payton. The three years that followed took her from Charlestown through the Carolinas, up through Maryland — where she wrote the epistle from West River — into New England and the northern provinces, and into Philadelphia during the opening of the French and Indian War, with the war-tax question dividing Friends there and the peace testimony under real strain. She came home in 1756 with her health gone.
Three days
On the seventeenth of third month 1757, in the meeting house at Mountrath, she married Samuel Neale. Four days before the wedding she had risen in the women’s monthly meeting at Mountmellick and given what everyone present understood to be a farewell: the fields were already white for harvest, she said, the faithful labourers few, and everyone should do their day’s work in their day. Three days after the wedding she was dead. Samuel Neale spent the next thirty years as one of the most beloved ministers in Ireland and never stopped speaking of her.
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. Note that she wrote across the calendar change: before 1752 the first month is March, from 1752 onward it is January, and every occurrence is bracketed accordingly. Two hundred and forty-six 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.
