Ann The Word: The Story of Ann Lee, Female Messiah, Mother of the Shakers, the Woman Clothed with the Sun

Ann The Word: The Story of Ann Lee, Female Messiah, Mother of the Shakers, the Woman Clothed with the Sun

by RichardFrancis (Author)

Synopsis

In 1773, Ann Lee left the Manchester House of Correction where she had been starved and deprived of sleep for 14 days. In that time she claimed that, in a vision, God told her that she was the Messiah. She set forth to proclaim Ann the Word , the woman clothed with the sun and took the title of Mother. Ironically her own four children all died at birth. To escape persecution in 18th century Manchester, she took the faithful, including her husband and father, on a pilgrimage to America arriving in New York and later settling in Niskeyuna. The Shaker phenomenon grew, fuelled by visions of Mother Ann after her death in 1784. Famed particularly for their later characteristic furniture design the shakers were only disbanded in the 1960s. This is the first account of the extraordinary life of a visionary who founded a community in her own image in Pioneering America.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
Edition: New
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 07 May 2001

ISBN 10: 1857029704
ISBN 13: 9781857029703

Media Reviews
'It is one of those books tht is utterly interesting for it's own sake...Entertaining and absorbing.' Jeanette Winterson 'The first freestanding biography of the most powerful low-born religious woman since Joan of Arc. The Shakers were way different in Ann's day. They hung their chairs on the wall to create space for their dervish-like whirling, accompanied by raucous songs, shouting in tongues, calling out devils, falling down in ecstasy. Ann Lee was a holy terror.'' Sunday Times ''Bizarre and fascinating byways of Anglo-American history. These heady days of Shakerism are unlikely to be better depicted than in this book, with its meticulously researched account of this heroic, indomitable, mesmerising, chastity-obsessed, and ultimately rather ghastly woman.' Sunday Telegraph
Author Bio
Richard Francis is a visiting lecturer at Bath University. He is a playwright, reviewer and novelist, having published 'Taking Apart the Poco Poco' and 'Fat Hen' .