In 1677 or 1678, in Gloucester, a fourteen-year-old girl named Elizabeth became convinced that ‘a sweet spirit was in my bosom, and a divine light shined in my understanding’. For days thereafter, ‘the divine love was more to me than my natural food or any outward enjoyment whatsoever’. Her family worried that she was endangering her health and told her, as she put it, ‘that I was young in years and that I might take a little more delight in the world … I might serve God when I was older’. They convinced her to relax, but looking back years later, she regretted taking their advice. She joined the Quakers and as an adult she believed that she had received premonitions at the age of fourteen: ‘I had manifestations of things that were to come, which I have since seen come to pass.’ This episode, recounted in a memorial printed in full for the first time in The writings of Elizabeth Webb, tells us much about Quaker views of childhood. Quakers believed that God could speak to anyone, and this led them to respect the spiritual torments and insights of children including girls. Webb's childhood experience also illustrates a common early Quaker sense of foreboding, informed not only by a fear of dying unprepared but also by a powerful belief that the Quakers were living in momentous times, perhaps the final days before Christ's return to earth. Those who thought this way had no time for idleness or vanity. During her first visit to America in 1698, Webb's belief that she was participating in an eschatological drama inspired her to interrogate the structure of society. Seeing ‘great numbers of black people that were in slavery’, she wondered whether they could receive divine grace. She spoke to them but could come to no conclusion on the basis of the conversation. An answer came in a dream. A heavenly visitation informed her that ‘they were the servants that I was sent to call’. Webb was respected by other Quakers in her lifetime, but she was not extraordinarily influential. Most of the essays in this collection have never been published before. Her writings are historically important because her life bridged two periods that, separately, have attracted scholars interested in Quaker eschatology. Recently Patrick Erben has emphasised the millenarian hope that surrounded the founding of Pennsylvania, and Marcus Rediker has examined the way in which Benjamin Lay, in the 1730s, studied the Book of Revelation for insight into the slavery question. Webb, like Lay, was fascinated with Revelation. Her discourse on the final book of the Bible takes up 129 pages. As a female writer, she provides an intriguing perspective on issues that are often associated with men, but unfortunately her prose is not as easily accessible as that of Ann Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson or Sarah Kemble Knight. Reading Webb takes some work, and it would be hard work for most undergraduates. None the less, scholars should pay attention. These essays are revealing.