Memoirs of the Life of Catharine Phillips
The memoirs of Catharine Payton Phillips (1727–1794), one of the most travelled women ministers of eighteenth-century Quakerism. From her early visitations in England she is carried through Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, across the Atlantic to Charleston, and up through the southern and middle colonies to New England — then home again to Holland and the length of Britain. A record of tireless gospel labour, shrewd observation, and seasoned spiritual counsel. A modern English edition with linked scripture and historical references.
- A transatlantic ministering journey through Britain, Ireland, Holland, and colonial America
- Sixteen chapters of travels, meetings, and letters of counsel
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read5.7 hours
- Length81,789 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 5.7 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 5.7 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 4.5 hours to 7.8 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 77,359 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 4,430 words |
| Total | 81,789 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 4,430 of the 81,789 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
4.5 hours and 7.8 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 5.7 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 234–327 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
Catharine Payton was born in 1727 into a Quaker family and came early into the work of the ministry. These memoirs — drawn from her own journals and letters and published in 1797, three years after her death — follow one of the great travelling ministers of her generation across two continents.
The narrative moves at the pace of her journeys. From her parents and early visitations she sets out through Wales, the western counties, and Ireland; then Scotland, and a growing prospect of America. The central chapters carry the reader across the Atlantic to Charleston and up through the southern and middle colonies to Philadelphia and the New England meetings, before the homeward voyage. The later chapters return her to Warwick, Haverfordwest, and Dublin, over to Holland and the Low Countries, and through the length of England again — with letters of counsel woven in, and the sober reflections of a woman who had given her life to the road.
Married late to William Phillips of Redruth, she is remembered here under the name by which her memoirs were published. What the book preserves is not incident for its own sake but the steady inward discipline of a public Friend: the weight of appointed meetings, the discernment of when to speak and when to be silent, and the seasoning of a ministry tested over decades and thousands of miles.
This edition gently modernizes Phillips’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 measured cadence of her counsel 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.
