From Friends to Brethren

Author: Gerald West
Series: Studies in Brethren History
Publisher: BAHN
BAHN is pleased to announce the publication of its latest Studies in Brethren History: From Friends to Brethren: The Howards of Tottenham—Quakers, Brethren, and Evangelicals by Gerald West (271 pp.) The Howards were longstanding Quakers and were at the leading edge of science early in the nineteenth century—Luke Howard was the first to classify clouds and his nomenclature remains with us; and his son, John Eliot Howard, greatly advanced the pharmaceutical processes that made quinine, the only reliable treatment for malarial fever, widely available for medical use. Gerald West’s narrative, which is grounded in extensive research, focuses on key members of the family as they made the transition from Quaker commitment in the eighteenth century to the Brethren movement in the 1830s and 1840s. His study of the Howard family of Tottenham (now part of London) and Ackworth in Yorkshire offers an illuminating perspective on how particular religious convictions, once adopted by some family members, can spread throughout, and bind, the kinship group. It illustrates the role that extended family played in the development of thought and cultural practice in nineteenth-century Britain and it sheds light on the development of evangelicalism during the nineteenth century, as refracted through the lens of this branch of the Howard family.