The Centre is delighted to announce the publication of Methodism and External Controversies in Britain, 1800-1900: A Provisional Biography by Clive D. Field.
Like most new religious movements, Methodism encountered opposition and found itself embroiled in literary controversies with its critics from the outset. The hundreds of anti-Methodist publications issued during the eighteenth century, and Methodist responses thereto, have already been extensively investigated by scholars. Less well-known, however, are the external controversies in which British and Irish Methodism was engaged during the nineteenth century, especially in its first half, and the publications to which they gave rise.
In this work, Clive D. Field offers the first modern (albeit still provisional) bibliography of that literature, comprising 862 books, book chapters, and pamphlets for 1800–1900 in which Methodists either responded to literary attacks from Anglicans, Catholics, Nonconformists, and Freethinkers or initiated attacks on them, for reasons of doctrine, polity, or on other grounds. Many of these disputes were local, rather than national, in nature. The bibliography, preceded by a substantial introduction, is fully annotated, including edition histories and brief biographies of authors and subjects, and fully indexed, by author, date, short title, and place of imprint. The volume will be essential reading for anyone researching Methodist relations with other Churches in this period.
Clive D. Field is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham and a former Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library. He has researched and published extensively in the social history of British religion from the eighteenth century to the present, with particular reference to statistical sources and the history of Methodism. His most recent book (2022), also from the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, is Methodism in Great Britain and Ireland: A Select Bibliography of Published Local Histories.
This book from OCMCH Publications is available in both paperback. Order your copy now by following this link.
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