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Citation

Fitzpatrick M, Macleod E & Page A (eds.) (2024) The Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence 1750–1810: Volume II: 1784–1790, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-wodrow-kenrick-correspondence-1750-1810-9780198809029?lang=en&cc=gb

Abstract
This is the second volume of the Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence 1750–1810. Reverend James Wodrow (1730-1810), minister of the Church of Scotland at Stevenston in Ayrshire, and Samuel Kenrick (1728-1811), tutor to a Renfrewshire family until 1763, and subsequently a merchant and banker in Bewdley, Worcestershire, began corresponding around 1750, soon after leaving the University of Glasgow. They continued to do so until James Wodrow's death in 1810. Their correspondence is an exceptionally rich resource for the study of British culture and society in the era of Enlightenment and revolutions, here made easily available to scholars for the first time. Samuel Kenrick lived in England from 1765, and the men only met again in 1789, so their friendship was carried out almost entirely on paper for forty-five years. The correspondence constitutes a remarkable record of a friendship. In Volume 2: 1784–1790, Wodrow and Kenrick were long established in successful careers, and their daughters were now adults. A major theme in this book is Mary Kenrick’s visit to Scotland to stay with the Wodrow family in summer 1784, and Helen ‘Nell’ Wodrow’s return with her to Bewdley, to become part of the Kenrick household until September 1785. Wodrow himself visited Bewdley, on the only occasions he ever did this, in early September and late October 1788, on his way to and from London to arrange for the publication of two volumes of the sermons of his mentor, Principal William Leechman of Glasgow University. According to Rick Sher, these letters ‘contain the most complete account known to me of the making of an eighteenth-century book’. As well as discussing family, friendship and the practicalities of publishing, the letters in this volume contain lively and highly readable exchanges on theology and church politics in Scotland and England, university politics in Glasgow, a wide range of contemporary literature, and an enormous spectrum of famous and less well-known politicians, authors, clergymen and local figures in Ayrshire and Worcestershire.

Keywords
Letters; friendship; Enlightenment; Scotland; England; Church of Scotland; heterodoxy; Unitarianism; daughters; book history; publishing; reform