Jane Fenn Hoskens was an exemplary minister and writer of eighteenth-century America. In many ways her life story bears testimony to the possibilities for women who joined the transatlantic Society of Friends (Quakers) at that time. At age nineteen, feeling a calling to go to Pennsylvania, she left behind all her family and relations in England and immigrated to America. She rose from the state of indenture to being one of the most well-respected and well-traveled Quaker ministers and writers of the century, carrying her prophetic message throughout the colonies, Barbados, and Great Britain.

Although her autobiography, The Life and Sufferings of that Faithful Servant of Christ, Jane Hoskens, a Public Preacher among the People Called Quakers (1771), is her only published record, many letters and journals of other Friends, in manuscript and in various publications, attest to Hoskens's influence throughout the religious society and early American society at...