The three volumes comprising ‘Quaker Encounters’ provide a comprehensive survey of the relief work undertaken overseas by members of the Religious Society of Friends—men and women who continued in the long tradition of compassionate action stretching back to the earliest days of Christianity. The present work had its genesis in a more modest work commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Friends Foreign Ministry Association (FFMA) in 1916. Ormerod Greenwood, an acknowledged historian and fellow Quaker was asked to undertake a revisionary reappraisal of this earlier work and given extensive access to archival material stored at Friends House.

The work is divided into three main sections. Unusually, the opening chapters of the second section appear at the end of Volume 1 and flow to a conclusion at the beginning of Volume 3.

The accounts of relief and charitable and philanthropic work span many centuries; from early medieval times up to and including the 2nd World War.

Section 1 provides an historical context to the early Quaker period introduced in Section 2, whilst volume 3 covers the late 19th and first half of the 20th century up to and including the 2nd World War. ( )