Jennifer M. Lloyd's Women and the shaping of British Methodism is a significant work for several reasons, but, most notably, for its self-conscious desire to respond to David Hempton's call to analyse women's experience within Methodism, which he made some time ago now in Methodism: empire of the spirit (2005). Standing within the tradition of women's history, Lloyd argues that her examination of the experience of British Methodism seeks to show the extent to which doors have opened and closed for women according to men's needs and concerns – a point that is even illustrated by the book's front cover, a cartoon taken from the Birmingham Owl in 1834, which depicts two male Methodist ministers scuffling over the entrance-way to a Wesleyan conference. The disagreement, it would seem, revolves around the admittance of a female counterpart, who has yet to even make it over the threshold, and is left in suspended animation as the fighting ensues. Hovering over the scene is the ghost of John Wesley, who retains an impassive expression throughout the undignified fracas. This depiction highlights the second significant theme that Lloyd deals with so effectively. Covering the period between 1807 and 1907, but also incorporating renowned women preachers during Wesley's lifetime, Lloyd draws on an array of manuscript and other primary source material to explore the reasons why some Methodist sects allowed women to preach, whilst others did not. In so doing, she teases out the subtle socio-political differences that existed between the various Methodist groupings, such as the Primitive Methodists and Bible Christians, amongst others, which flourished during the Napoleonic era. Of particular interest is the restriction that was placed on female preaching and evangelism in areas like Yorkshire where support for the self-styled, ‘enthusiastic’ prophetess, Joanna Southcott, was especially strong. The variegated experience of British Methodism during this period is further indicated when Lloyd uncovers the ways in which a more formalised Methodist ministry sought to exclude female preachers by the 1840s. Crucially, however, Lloyd makes the point that female evangelism did not die out altogether. On this, she both builds on but also breaks with Deborah Valenze's Prophetic sons and daughters: female preaching and popular religion in industrial England (1985). Female Methodist evangelism, she says, adapted and thrived in many different guises throughout the nineteenth century. Indeed, it was a sustained activity that not only promoted a domestic ‘cottage’ religious revival in chapel communities, but which also showed a robust capacity for ‘effective public speaking’ overseas in the form of missionary work in Britain's colonies. Whilst it was certainly the case that no nineteenth-century woman preacher achieved parity with her male colleagues, Lloyd argues that by the end of the century women did manage to achieve some measure of professional standing within Methodism ‘by seizing opportunities as they arose rather than embarking on an explicit challenge to their exclusion from the formal ministry’ (p. 9). If it was the case, as Hempton has suggested, that Methodism was shaped by women in ways that we do not fully understand, it is also true that Lloyd's work will aid our understanding by providing a nuanced and detailed account of Methodism's most ‘persistent preachers’. For this reason, Lloyd has made an important contribution to women's history as well as the history of British dissenting religion.