The present volume is one in a series (edited by Rufus Jones) that seeks to create a comprehensive history of Quakerism, the plans for which were begun by John Wilhelm Rowntree during the last year of his life. At the time The Beginnings of Quakerism was published, two other volumes in the series, both authored by Rufus Jones, had been published: Studies in Mystical Religion and The Quakers in the American Colonies.. The following excerpt from the Preface to the present work offers a listing and concise critique of existing histories of the Religious Society of Friends:
"The standard History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, by William Sewel of Amsterdam, was published in Dutch in 1717, in English in 1722, and in German in 1742. It had been preceded by a much inferior work, Gerard Croese's Historia Quakeriana, printed in Latin in 1695, and in German and English in 1696, and was succeeded in 1789-1790 by John Gough's History which in the earlier period is a mere compilation. Sewel's book is a conscientious and well-written piece of work for its day, but necessarily falls far short of present needs. Of shorter histories, The Rise of the Quakers, by T. Edmund Harvey (1905), The Story of Quakerism, by Elizabeth Braithwaite Emmott (1908), and the article on "Friends, Society of," by A. Neave Brayshaw, in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, may be consulted with advantage."