Quaker writer and speaker Bathsheba Bowers wrote a spiritual autobiography, An Alarm Sounded to Prepare the Inhabitants of the World to Meet the Lord in the Way of His Judgments (1709), one of the first published religious testimonials by an Anglo-American woman. In a biographical sketch of Bowers written in 1879, William J. Potts referred to other works written by her, but none of these has come to light in scholarly research, and her reputation accordingly rests solely on her spiritual autobiography.

Although Bowers's work joined an established tradition of Quaker journals being written during her time by women in England, An Alarm Sounded to Prepare the Inhabitants of the World to Meet the Lord in the Way of His Judgments added an American dimension to this highly personal genre. It was not uncommon for English Quakers, men and women alike, to publish their journals, but in the early eighteenth...