Jane Lead

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Standard Name: Lead, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Ward
Married Name: Jane Lead
Used Form: Jane Leade
Pseudonym: J. L.
JL was a seventeenth-century mystic and visionary, a diarist, and a pamphleteer. All her literary roles were aspects of her dominant calling, that of religious leader and Heavenly Spy. Her later works used the medium of other people's hands to write them, because she was going blind. In her last years her writings, boosted by the energy and power of her sect, were read not only in England but internationally.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Joanna Southcott
She wrote that the Spirit visited [her] by day and by night;
Hopkins, James K. A Woman To Deliver her People: Joanna Southcott and English Millenarianism in an Era of Revolution. University of Texas Press, 1982.
18
she gave vivid, bodily-sounding accounts of his presence. She came to believe that she was the woman described in the book of...
Cultural formation William Law
He became a Church of England clergyman, but after the accession of George I he refused to take the oath of allegiance (since he was a Jacobite). This made him a Nonjuror, ineligible for positions...
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Conway
AC 's work was of particular interest to the Philadelphian Society associated with Jane Lead . It is now believed to have influenced Leibnitz (who owned and annotated a copy of her treatise), and through...
Literary responses Mary Astell
Theosophical Transactions, the journal of Jane Lead 's Philadelphian Society , warmly praised MA 's work and published extracts from it. Damaris Masham , however (who was herself guessed by some to be the...
Textual Features Elizabeth Bathurst
Having been roughly handled by this congregation, EB demands: Oh! where was your patient Mind . . . . Oh! where was your Christian Moderation . . . . Oh! where was your Lamb-like Meekness...

Timeline

1678: Ann Bathurst, a middle-class member of Jane...

Women writers item

1678

Ann Bathurst , a middle-class member of Jane Lead 's religious sect, was visited by an angel; as a consequence she began to keep a diary of her visions.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
She is no known relation to...

Probably February or March 1701: Sectarian religious writer Mary Pennyman...

Women writers item

Probably February or March 1701

Sectarian religious writer Mary Pennyman having died on 14 January,
Pennyman, Mary. Some of the Letters and Papers. Editor Pennyman, John, 1701.
49
her husband, John Pennyman , published Some of the Letters and Papers which were written by Mrs. Mary Pennyman, relating to An Holy and...

Texts

Lead, Jane. A Fountain of Gardens. Printed and are to be sold by the book-sellers of London and Westminster, 1701, 4 vols.
Lead, Jane. A Living Funeral Testimony. J. Bradford, 1702.
Lead, Jane. A Message to the Philadelphian Society. J. Bradford, 1698, 3 vols.
Lead, Jane. The Ark of Faith. J. Bradford, 1696.
Lead, Jane. The Ascent to the Mount of Vision. 1699.
Lead, Jane. The Enochian Walks with God. D. Edwards, 1694.
Lead, Jane. The Heavenly Cloud Now Breaking. Printed for the author, 1681.
Lead, Jane. The Revelation of Revelations. A. Sowle, 1683.
Lead, Jane. The Tree of Faith. J. Bradford, 1696.
Lead, Jane. The Wars of David, and the Peaceable Reign of Solomon. J. Bradford, 1700.
Lead, Jane. The Wonders of God’s Creation Manifested. T. Sowle, 1695.
Lead, Jane. Three Messages to the Philadelphian Society. Thomson, 1895.