Wesley, John ___ 1703-1791 ___ British ___ priest

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
John was the 15th of 19 children born to Susanna, wife of Samuel Wesley, Rector of Epworth. Samuel and Susanna believed that Christian living depended on acts as well as faith and were campaigners for social justice. John Wesley studied at Charterhouse school and Christ Church, Oxford. As a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, he helped establish the Holy Club, dubbed Methodist due to their method of studying the Bible. While still young men, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to Georgia sent both John and Charles to Georgia, a journey which proved a formative experience. Subsequently, John Wesley became passionate about including all ordinary people in the church, and began a campaign of preaching outdoors. He is said to have preached 40,000 sermons (sometimes to crowds numbering in their thousands) and travelled 250,000 miles in doing so. Prison reform and universal education were among the many social issues he cared and preached about. He married a widow with four children in 1751, but she grew resentful of his concern for young women who attended his societies and left him. A long journal, published in eight volumes, was edited by Wesley himself from a meticulous set of daily diary entries. What strikes one most about Wesley's journal, Ponsonby says, is 'not the moral excellence of the austere religious organiser, but the astounding physical strength and nervous energy of the man'.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1725-1791 ___ religious social travel prison education Germany Holland US

WEB TEXT LINKS
etext
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etext

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
University of Georgia Libraries

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Journal of John Wesley
The Heart of John Wesley’s Journal
The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley

May 2005, August 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.