1879. With sketches of their female associates and successors in the early history of the denomination. Stevens was an American editor, historian and Methodist Episcopal clergyman. He suffered the trials of poverty and hard work in childhood and early on he was converted and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. He began to preach when a mere youth, and before he was twenty-one years of age was regarded as a prodigy of eloquence. He opened the vein of American Methodistic history, and gave a long series of historical articles, which afterward appeared in the form of books, and, indeed, entered upon the investigations which produced his History of Methodism, one of the ablest and best-known works of its class. He states in the Preface to this volume that his previous historical studies of early Methodism have convinced him that no other modern, perhaps no ancient, section of the Church possessed richer materials for the illustration of female piety and agency in religion than Methodism. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.