John Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley
John Wesley was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire, in 1703, four years before his brother Charles. Their father was an Anglican priest. He attended Charterhouse School in London and Christ Church, Oxford. His diary begins, like Charles', with their journey to Georgia in the American colonies in 1735. His missionary work there was not a success, but led to him being influenced by the Moravian Church, and in 1738 he visited their German headquarters. Returning to England, he began to travel the country as a preacher, although he broke with the Moravians in 1739 and formed the Methodist Society with his brother and George Whitfield. As his diary shows, for the next fifty years he travelled through Britain, and sometimes abroad. His complete and unpublished diary runs to 26 volumes, so our presentation is based on a published selection of individual entries. This inevitably means that most journeys cannot be traced in full. Wesley died in London in 1791.