The Letters of Mary Penry

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Product Description The Letters of Mary Penry, a Single Moravian Woman in Early America Edited by Scott Paul Gordon The Letters of Mary Penry provides unprecedented access to the intimate world of a Moravian single sister. This vast collection of letters introduces readers to an unmarried woman who worked, worshiped, and wrote about her experience living in Moravian religious communities at the time of the American Revolution and early republic. Penry, a Welsh immigrant, and a convert to the Moravian faith, was well connected in both the international Moravian community and the state of Pennsylvania. This collection brings together more than seventy of Penry’s letters, few of which have been previously published. Gordon’s introduction provides a useful context for understanding the letters and the unique woman who wrote them. This collection of Penry’s letters broadens perspectives on early America and the eighteenth-century Moravian Church by providing a sustained look at the spiritual and social life of a single woman at a time when singleness was extraordinarily rare. It also makes an important contribution to the recovery of women’s voices in early America, amplifying views on politics, religion, and social networks from a time when few women’s perspectives on these subjects have been preserved. “A thoroughly astonishing record of a woman’s life, work, and thought in the age of the American Revolution. Gordon’s careful editing, detailed notes, and engaging introduction bring Mary Penry to life and make it easy to slip into a long-past world. This source adds an essential work to the corpus of women’s writings from the eighteenth century. It will be prized by scholars and readers alike for a long time to come.”—Katherine Carté, author of Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America Published by Pennsylvania State University Press 2018, trade paperback, 297 pages, $24.95

The Letters of Mary Penry

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