It is good to know that Methodist scholarship is alive and well, as has been shown by the steady stream of studies on aspects of Methodist history (or, should one say, perhaps more correctly, ‘the history of Methodism’) that have emerged in recent years. The year 2003 – the tercentenary of John Wesley's birth – saw a whole crop of books on the elder Wesley and early Methodism. The year 2007, the three-hundredth anniversary of Charles Wesley's birth, witnessed another ‘explosion’ – if of a somewhat lesser nature. There can now be no excuse that the erstwhile paucity of material relating to Charles prevents scholars from presenting an accurate, balanced picture of the man who for long has been in his elder brother's shadow – a fact to which historians and Charles Wesley himself have contributed in equal measure. The flawed (though readable) biography by Gary Best which appeared in 2006, has left plenty of room for writers to explore facets of Charles's character, beliefs and his manifold contributions to the development of Methodism and to the wider Church as a whole.

Two major recent studies of Charles Wesley do just this. Charles Wesley: life, literature and legacy is a fascinating anthology of articles dedicated to the memory of one of the greatest Methodist scholars of the twentieth century, Frank Baker, who died in 1999. Generally speaking, the strength of anthologies is the breadth of their subject matter and, given the diversity of the writers enlisted, the variety of their approach and style. The weakness that can be inherent in these types of collection is that individual contributions can vary in quality, sometimes enormously. Not so with this multi-authored study, with the breadth of its coverage and the depth of its scholarship. There are chapters on virtually every aspect of Charles Wesley's life, theology and churchmanship – not just what he gave to Methodism but also to the wider Church – and there is also a posthumous contribution by Frank Baker on Charles Wesley's Christmas hymns. Incidentally, at £25.00 for a book of nearly 600 pages, this book is excellent value and eminently affordable for the ordinary reader.

Chapters are helpfully grouped by theme, beginning with three historiographical contributions which place Charles into the context of modern research, then moving on to those dealing with his relationship with members of his family (including a very perceptive one by John Newton, entitled ‘Brothers in arms’) and important figures such as John Fletcher, covered by a perceptive study by Peter Forsaith. These are followed by a series of chapters on Charles's ideas, perhaps the area which has been most neglected in the past but which now receives the attention it deserves. And so we have, for example, a scholarly essay by Geoffrey Wainwright which sets out Charles's antipathy towards Calvinism and which describes the ‘theological victory’ which he and his brother won as being less clear-cut than devoted Methodists would like to admit.

One of the most interesting pieces of writing, as one would expect from one of today's foremost authorities on Wesley studies, is by Richard Heitzenrater, entitled intriguingly ‘Purge the preachers: the Wesleys and quality control’, which many readers will want to visit earlier rather than later, even though it is the penultimate chapter. Heitzenrater, who is not afraid to turn a critical spotlight on the younger Wesley, examines the way Charles ‘sparred’ with his brother over the standards expected of the preachers. Charles was stricter than John and was even not averse to taking a side-swipe at his own brother's preaching which, considering the help that John had given to him in his early years, was perhaps a little harsh. Charles could be quite insensitive at times in his criticism of preachers, though his insistence on the maintenance of high standards was surely justified.

The second study under review, Charles Wesley and the struggle for Methodist identity, by Gareth Lloyd, is another volume which serious students of the younger Wesley would wish to have on their bookshelves, although at £45.00 this book will tend to appear more in libraries. Lloyd sets out, not to write a ‘standard’ biography as such, but to open up areas of interpretation (and fact) that have been neglected or distorted since Thomas Jackson wrote his enormously influential biography of Charles in 1844. And so, whilst some aspects of the book cover familiar territory – such as Charles's early life and the strong influences of his family upon his development – other chapters lead the reader into more radical areas of exploration. In a fascinating chapter that deals with the early years of the revival, the author analyses the part Charles played in the stormy relationship which he and his brother had with groups (such as the Moravians, over quietism) and individuals (such as Whitefield, over Calvinism). Perhaps the most interesting part of the book, however, is the second half, in which Lloyd examines the major (and hitherto much misunderstood) contribution which Charles Wesley made to the development of Methodism – particularly in helping to shape its future character as a denomination. A moving extract from a letter written by Thomas Coke to John Wesley in December 1779 in which Charles is described as a ‘real friend’ of both Methodism and the Church of England, is just one example of Lloyd's command of his sources.

It might seem harsh to be too critical of this excellent and thought-provoking book. Rather surprisingly, Charles's formative experience in Georgia (albeit brief, at five months) is skimmed over in three paragraphs, whereas one would have wished for a little more analysis here. The author also uses the term ‘conversion’ on a number of occasions (e.g. on p. 47 with respect to the events of May 1738), without defining what he means by the word, or commenting on the very different way in which it was used in the eighteenth century compared to today. Charles's work as a hymn-writer is almost completely ignored, though there is no shortage of material elsewhere on this. But these are very minor quibbles; Charles Wesley and the struggle for Methodist identity is an excellent study by a historian whose mastery of primary source material (his work at the John Rylands Library has made him eminently qualified in this respect) has enabled him to offer readers a picture of the younger Wesley which corresponds much more closely to reality than other more ‘popular’ works.

Thanks to the work of the Charles Wesley Society and a number of the contributors to Charles Wesley: life, literature and legacy – particularly Jeremy Gregory, Gareth Lloyd, Kenneth Newport and Henry Rack from this country, and Ted Campbell, Richard Heitzenrater and S. T. Kimbrough from the United States – there is now more material available for those who wish to engage in serious study of Charles Wesley. Both these books deserve the highest praise.