The Journal of John Woolman

John Woolman’s Journal is widely regarded as one of the finest spiritual autobiographies in the English language. Charles Lamb called it “the only American book I ever read twice.” It was included in the Harvard Classics as essential reading, and remains continuously in print more than 250 years after its first publication in 1774.

Woolman (1720–1772) was a New Jersey shopkeeper, tailor, and itinerant Quaker minister who became one of the earliest and most persistent voices against slavery in America — not through political campaigns or fiery denunciation, but through patient, one-on-one conversations with slaveholders, always rooted in shared spiritual principles. His method changed the world: largely as a result of his decades of quiet labor, the Religious Society of Friends became the first religious body in America to formally forbid slaveholding among its members, in 1776.

But the Journal is far more than an anti-slavery tract. It is the intimate record of a man wrestling with how to live rightly in a fallen world. Woolman agonizes over whether to accept hospitality from slaveholders, whether his shop is becoming too profitable for spiritual health, whether to pay taxes that fund war, and how to speak difficult truths to people he loves. His radical commitment to simplicity — he closed his business when it grew too successful, dressed in undyed clothing, and refused to ride in stagecoaches because the horses were overworked — makes him a forerunner of modern movements for ethical consumption, animal welfare, and economic justice.

This Friends Illuminated edition presents Woolman’s complete Journal in modernized English, with eleven chapters covering his life from youth in West Jersey through his final journey to England, where he died of smallpox in York at the age of fifty-one. Includes editorial introductions, scripture links, and historical annotations.