This is the second of Ted Campbell's three projected studies of how the Wesley/Methodist communities have handed on their identities to later generations. The first volume considered transmission of common doctrinal teaching; the present volume covers common narratives; and a third will consider common and authorised practices. Common narratives include both popular and scholarly versions of Wesley origins. Campbell is very conscious of the fact that three levels of historical reflection are involved here: present-day historians considering the facts in our own historical context; individuals and communities who have told narratives of Wesleyan origins; and the level of the origins of Wesleyan communities in the eighteenth century. To carry out these analyses Campbell considers four possible metaphors: a play within a play; the construction of the past by storytellers and interpreters; the inheritance of DNA (memes); and computer coding. The last metaphor is preferred as allowing both for the persistence of early elements of code and the remodelling of them by later generations for changing situations. He then lists some thirty ‘narrative modules’ used to evoke Wesleyan origins, labelled as composites such as ‘EpworthUpbringing’, ‘QuestforHoliness’, ‘AldersgateExperience’, ‘ClassesBands’, ‘MethodistBenevolence’. The selection of these themes is then traced through five periods: eighteenth-century origins; early nineteenth-century development of churches; later nineteenth-century period of Methodist ascendancy; Methodist ‘Modernism’ in the early twentieth century; and ‘Beyond Modernism’ in the later twentieth and early twenty-first century. Notable changes include the decline of belief in a divine providential creation of Methodism and the shift from Wesley's central pursuit of Christian holiness to the more conventional Evangelical emphasis on justification by faith through conversion. Full attention is given to American developments which may be less familiar to English readers: American scholars in recent years have been particularly interested in developing a distinctive ‘Wesleyan’ theology. It is important to note that Campbell is not creating a comprehensive historiography of Methodism but rather tracing the development of Methodist self-identity. Although he is well aware of non-Methodist and academic interpretations of Methodism, these are only referred to in passing unless they affected Methodist self-identity or had been affected by Methodist self-interpretations. So there is no extended analysis of E. P. Thompson's or Halevy's familiar theories or more recent fruitful coming together of academic scholarship with an understanding of the inner dynamics of Methodism, or the shift from study of Wesley to the well-documented lives of rank-and-file Methodists. This is, nevertheless, an illuminating study of the changing face of the forms in which a religious movement creates and modifies its self-understanding in response to changing external and internal pressures. Indeed this could well provide a helpful model for other religious bodies to explore the development of their own self-identities.