Part of the collection of Charles Wesley’s writings.This is Volume 1 of a three-volume collection that gathers all personal letters written between 1688 and 1749 by Charles Wesley for which there is any known surviving content. It includes many items absent from any prior collection. The longhand letters, and those which survive only as Wesley’s record in shorthand of a letter sent, have been carefully reviewed against the surviving sources for accuracy. They are fully annotated, including: 1) events, persons, and places mentioned; 2) Wesley’s scripture quotations and allusions; 3) hymns and other literature quoted; and 4) current holding locations for manuscript sources.
The collection is titled the “correspondence” of Charles Wesley because the transcription and annotation of letters he wrote were prepared in parallel with the transcription and annotation of all letters written to Charles Wesley for which there is any known surviving content. These “in-letters” have been made available online in conjunction with the print publication of letters Wesley wrote, with notation in both settings indicating which are replies to one another. The in-letters are publicly available online via Duke Divinity’s Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition.
In combination with his previously published journal letters, Charles Wesley’s correspondence sheds significant light on the emergence of—and splits within—the evangelical revival in eighteenth-century England. It also provides a window into broader cultural movements and the (sometimes tense) inner dynamics of Charles’s immediate and extended family.
