Compared with the original Wesleyan body, the Primitive Methodists have far fewer surviving primary sources, much less secondary literature and have attracted fewer professional historians with Methodist backgrounds. (To Sandy Calder's list of unpublished theses could be added Michael Sheard's 1980 Manchester PhD on Primitive Methodist origins in Cheshire and South Lancashire.)

The traditional story portrays the Primitives as a revivalist movement emerging in Staffordshire in the early 1800s, led by working-class preachers headed by Hugh Bourne and William Clowes. Heroically struggling against persecution, they offered the Gospel to the neglected poor, using open-air camp meetings copied from America, and travelling women preachers. (Students at the ex-Primitive Hartley Victoria College will remember Bourne's battered boot and Clowes's stick and lantern preserved like sacred relics embodying this tradition.) The Primitives’ democratic structure, with laymen outnumbering ministers at every level, inspired Primitives active in working-class movements.

Recognising how historians’ interpretations are conditioned by time and background, Calder candidly describes his own credentials as an outsider with working-class origins. Well schooled in attempts to see the Primitives through misleading class and sociological lenses he also accepts, without being overawed by, post-modern critiques of history. He sees the traditional picture as a myth originally created by Hugh Bourne who controlled Primitive Methodist publishing and portrayed himself as the main leader, obscuring the contributions of others, notably Clowes. From the mid-nineteenth century the Primitives’ leadership, embarrassed by the Bourne and Clowes rivalry, doctored the record to create the picture of joint founding fathers. Later historians accepted the working-class image of the denomination and, when interpreting religious history in class or social terms, exaggerated the Primitives’ contribution to working-class movements. Scholars also failed to grapple with the problems of primary evidence in Bourne's manuscripts. (Like Calder, this reviewer found, when investigating the career of the charismatic preacher James Crawfoot (or Crawford) for a dictionary article in the 1990s, that Bourne's favourable account of their encounters in his contemporary journal was drastically altered in the later autobiographies.)

Calder first surveys the historiography of the picture created by Bourne and later Primitive Methodist and secular historians. Next, the ‘sources problem’, meaning the loss or destruction of a mass of autobiographical and administrative sources apart from Bourne's confusingly arranged manuscripts. The ‘Bourne problem’ further explores his personality and control of the record. Calder then exploits fresh or reinterpreted non-Methodist sources. Contemporary newspapers reveal that the Primitives were less persecuted, despised and plebeian than tradition claimed. Baptismal registers, the 1851 religious and other censuses and wills are examined and here Calder sets new standards of precision in his analysis of occupations to show that the Primitives were more prosperous and less working-class than tradition claimed. Chapel buildings and finance reveal changing taste and a preference for many small rather than a few large chapels. The statistical findings are humanised and enlivened with vignettes of representative personalities. A passing reference to a lay preacher walking miles to preaching appointments suggested poverty but concealed availability of horses (p. 143). Was this sabbatarianism or upholding the founding myth? This was also perpetuated in pious obituaries concealing tensions between worldly success and religious ideals.

Calder sees the Primitives as a denomination led by increasingly middle-class itinerants and lay leaders and appealing to skilled rather than unskilled workers. He plays down the role of camp-meetings and female preachers and the Primitives’ contribution to working-class movements. Most working-class people did not attend any church and the Primitives attracted an untypical, serious and salvation-seeking minority in all classes. Imprisoned by their own myths, the Primitives failed to adapt their appeal to changing times, failed in cities, over-stretched their resources by building chapels for an expansion that never came and so were forced into reunion with other Methodists in 1932.

By applying a thematic rather than chronological treatment, Calder acknowledges overlaps (and indeed repetitions) between chapters. The history emerges through scattered summaries and rigorous re-examination of conflicting evidence for particular episodes. But careful reading will be rewarded for, despite Calder's modest claim only to offer a provisional alternative to the traditional story, this is a signal scholarly achievement which will be the indispensable starting-point for future studies.

This said, other aspects of the movement invite explanation. One obvious inquiry arises because Calder's exposition focuses upon the contrast between myth and reality in terms of the Primitives’ social status. Yet occasionally we find assertions, too easily missed, that the Primitives’ rejection of the Wesleyans’ anti-revivalist and preacher-centred style was ‘not for social but religious reasons’ (p. 265). So a detailed study of their religious experience seems appropriate. For the early Wesleyans we have Phyllis Mack's Heart religion in the British Enlightenment and part of Bruce Hindmarsh's Conversion narratives. Wesleyan autobiographies also show how in the inner struggle of female preachers a sense of divine calling overcame powerful social and religious inhibitions. Some Wesleyans like the Primitives wished nostalgically for revivalism and Wesley's controversial pursuit of ‘perfection’. The term ‘Primitive Methodism’ is actually a Wesleyan coinage from the 1790s. Though the evidence for the Primitives’ experience is slighter, two sources are helpful. Bourne's journal shows that the Primitives inhabited a highly supernatural world. The ‘Magic Methodists’ briefly described without comment by Calder had visions of charismatic preachers headed by Crawfoot, closely followed by the American Lorenzo Dow, with Bourne (who preferred prayer-meetings) well down. What they possessed and he longed for was ‘the [supernatural] power’. The other source, not mentioned by Calder, is Bourne's small book of hymns and songs for revivals and camp-meetings (1809), unlike the Wesleyans in its ‘glories’, trumpets, hallelujahs, hell and paradise. Although Dow's influence on the Primitives’ take-off is arguable, a substantial proportion of Bourne's book comes from Dow's 1806 collection published in Liverpool. Further explorations are possible though Calder's warning about the fragility of the Primitive Methodist sources must be borne in mind.