Quaker Book Collection

The Quaker Book Collection consists of the collection of John Ormerod Greenwood and books donated by Quaker Meeting Houses. John Ormerod Greenwood, born in 1907, was an actor, playwright and producer, as well as a Quaker historian who completed a three-volume series about Friends' international work, called 'Quaker Encounters'. He gave the 1978 Swarthmore lecture 'Signs of Life, Art and Religious Experience', setting out to address the way in which God can be discovered in and through the arts.

The book collection held in Special Collections includes books by and about Quakers, printed copies of spiritual journals and sufferings, copies of many Swarthmore lectures given between 1909 and 1959, reports of Quaker meetings and conferences, and copies of Quaker periodicals (incomplete runs) as follows:

• The Friend (between 1838 and 1949)
• The British Friend (between 1852 and 1888)
• The Irish Friend (between 1837 and 1842)
• The Journal of the Friends' Historical Society (between 1903 and 1986)
• Quaker History (between 1975 and 1979)