Zilpha Elaw
Editor(s)
Kimberly D. Blockett
Paperback
February 2026 • ISBN 978-1-64453-376-5 • $29.95
* E-Book Available
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Series
Regenerations
As a young Black orphan indentured to a Quaker family in Bristol, Pennsylvania, Zilpha Elaw (c. 1793–1873) decided to join the upstart Methodists in 1808. She preached her first sermon a decade later, ignoring her husband and the many church leaders, clergy, and laity who tried to silence her. Elaw’s memoir chronicles the first twenty years of her forty-year itinerant ministry during massive Protestant revivalism in the United States and England.
Elaw preached from Maine to Virginia, attracting multiracial and multidenominational audiences that included powerful men, wealthy White women, poor families, and enslaved communities. She moved from Bristol to Burlington, New Jersey, then to Nantucket, Massachusetts, and finally, in 1840, to London’s East End. In England, Elaw’s celebrity expanded, and at least twice she drew crowds so large they caused human stampedes and multiple injuries.
Blockett’s introduction and extensive annotations draw on newly unearthed information about the entirety of Elaw’s evangelism to provide context for this remarkable story of an antebellum Black woman’s personal and professional mobility.
About the Author
Zilpha Elaw (c. 1790-1873) has been cited as “one of the first outspoken black women in the United States.” She was an African-American preacher and spiritual autobiographer.
About the Editor
Kimberly D. Blockett is chair and professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware; she was previously associate professor of English at Penn State Brandywine. Her publications appear in the Cambridge History of African American Literature, MLA Approaches to Teaching Hurston, MELUS, African American Review, and Legacy.