The Bicentennial Edition of the works of John Wesley (so named because Abingdon Press took over the responsibility for the series from Oxford University Press in 1984, the bicentenary of the formation of American Methodism as an autonomous Church) has now been in continuous publication for over thirty years. Now that much of Wesley's own personal correspondence – his sermons, hymns, journal and diaries, and almost half of his letters – have appeared in print, the editors are turning their attention more to those areas which were never really covered thoroughly by the standard editions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Volume x in the current series (but the seventeenth to have been published so far), is a companion to volume ix, The Methodist societies: history, nature and design, edited by the late Rupert Davies and published in 1989, so it is to be greatly welcomed. In fact, prior to its publication the most accessible source for students of this aspect of the history of Methodism has been the excellent ‘taster’ published in 1964 by the great American scholar, Albert Outler, in the Library of Protestant Thought series. It was inevitable, perhaps, that this volume should run to well over 1,000 pages. What comes as a pleasant surprise, however, is to find that the editor has not simply reproduced clearly-annotated minutes from the first in 1744 right through to 1791 (together with the ‘doctrinal’, ‘disciplinary’, and the so-called ‘large’ minutes); Henry Rack has also prefaced the collection of documents with a remarkably detailed and helpful introduction that sets the material in the overall context of the history of the Methodist societies, thereby justifying the title of this collection. He concludes that the annual Conference was ‘a highly organised body with elaborate rules and … a theology centred on the process of salvation’, which helps to explain why, even to this day, Methodism has a Conference rather than a Synod or Convocation. Although we only see ‘a faint reflection of Wesley's overall ideals for his movement’ in the minutes, we none the less have a marvellous insight into the workings of Methodism in the eighteenth century; Henry Rack is to be thoroughly congratulated.