Some Fruits of Solitude
William Penn's beloved book of maxims, complete in both parts and modernized for today's reader. Written during his years of hiding after the fall of James II, Some Fruits of Solitude distills a full life — courtier, prisoner, founder of Pennsylvania — into 855 brief reflections on how to live: on education and marriage, friendship and business, patience, government, and the fear of God. This Friends Illuminated edition presents the 1693 Some Fruits and the 1702 More Fruits entire, arranged in thematic chapters with maxim numbers preserved and scripture references linked.
- Both parts complete — all 855 maxims of Some Fruits (1693) and More Fruits (1702)
- Penn's reflections on education, marriage, friendship, business, government, and religion
- Written in his years of enforced seclusion, when retirement became his teacher
- Modernized spelling and syntax, with scripture references linked · EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read2 hours
- Length28,860 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 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 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 1.6 hours to 2.7 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 25,485 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 3,375 words |
| Total | 28,860 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 3,375 of the 28,860 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
1.6 hours and 2.7 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 2 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 82–115 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
After the fall of James II in 1688, William Penn — once the most connected Quaker in England, founder of a thriving colony across the sea — became a hunted man. Accused of plotting for the exiled king, he withdrew from public life and spent nearly three years in seclusion in and around London. Out of that enforced retirement came the most quotable book he ever wrote. Some Fruits of Solitude, published anonymously in 1693, is the harvest of a man taking “a view of himself and the world” with nothing left to prove and no audience to perform for.
The book is a collection of maxims — short, polished reflections, rarely more than a few sentences each — on the whole conduct of life. Penn writes on the education of children and the choice of a wife; on frugality, industry, and the discipline of the tongue; on friendship, apparel, and the right bearing of both fortune and injury; on servants and masters, government and party, patience under wrongs, and the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom. A second gathering, More Fruits of Solitude, followed in 1702, adding portraits of the temporizing “able man” of the world and the true wise man, counsel on the government of thoughts, and a closing meditation on charity in its highest sense.
Robert Louis Stevenson carried a copy in his pocket across the Atlantic and treasured it above most books he knew. Its appeal has never faded, because Penn’s subject never dates: how to live well among other people without losing your soul. He is shrewd without cynicism and devout without cant, and his counsel — bound your desires, keep your word, hear before you judge, love your enemies because you will have them — reads as freshly now as it did three centuries ago.
This Friends Illuminated edition presents both parts complete — all 855 numbered maxims, with Penn’s preface to the reader — arranged in thematic chapters for modern reading while preserving the original maxim numbers and section heads. Spelling and syntax have been modernized so the text reads cleanly today, and scripture references are linked throughout.
