The editors of this Companion see Wesley Studies as having achieved ‘maturity’ as a ‘scholarly field’ during the second half of the twentieth century. It is certainly a compliment to the subject to be awarded a volume in this well-established Cambridge series and, recently, an Oxford handbook to Methodist studies. ‘Wesley’ and ‘Methodist’ studies are not quite the same, though Wesley's self-publicising presentation of Methodism has been liable to give this impression. The editors recognise that their subject has frequently been treated hagiographically and without an understanding of Wesley in his environment. Moreover, as Jeremy Gregory pointed out in a tercentenary volume on Wesley in 2003, part of the problem has been a lack of contact between Church-based and Academy-based scholarship. The present volume consciously attempts to understand Wesley in his context and to see how he affected that context. Modern Wesley Studies have been predominantly American and dedicated to developing a distinctive ‘Wesleyan’ theology with modern applications, though Richard Heitzenrater, to whom this volume is appropriately dedicated, is a distinguished exception as a Wesley biographer. English Methodist scholarship has shown more interest in Wesley's life and the political and social influence of later Methodism. The present volume contains surprisingly little on Wesley's theology and readers of this Journal may particularly value the historical essays. Jeremy Gregory's essay on the long eighteenth century admirably fulfils the aim of placing Wesley in context, highlighting the continuing debates on how far English society in this period was a modernising or traditional one. This is highly relevant to the interpretation of Wesley and his movement as exemplifying ‘enlightened’ or ‘traditional’ religion. David Hempton discusses the possible influences of Wesley and Methodism on their time in terms of relations with the established Church, with popular culture, with economics and politics and as possibly helping to save England from revolution. Essays by Isabel Rivers, Randy Maddox and Deborah Madden draw on what is now a far more informed and nuanced understanding of, respectively, Wesley's work as editor and publisher, as populariser of natural sciences and as amateur physician. They show that he was nearer the centre of mainstream culture in these matters than either admirers or denigrators have often supposed, though one may add the caution that Wesley's love of the supernatural is not given sufficient recognition here. Charles Wesley is also largely omitted as deserving separate treatment. It would have been useful to have noted the recent increase of research on the lay leadership and rank and file of Methodism, as exemplified by Phyllis Mack's Heart religion in the British Enlightenment. The large body of biographical material on which this is based gives a realistic picture of the nature of early Methodist experience, helps to show what conditioned Wesley's ideals for his movement and gives rare glimpses of women's and men's lives at a modest social level. These essays nevertheless offer welcome evidence of Church and Academy combining to understand Wesley in the context of his time.