FOX, GEORGE

born July 1624, Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire, Eng. died Jan. 13, 1691, London English preacher and missionary and founder of the Society of Friends (or Quakers); his personal religious experience made him hostile to church conventions and established his reliance on what he saw as inward light or God-given inspiration over scriptural authority or creeds. He recorded the birth of the Quaker movement in his Journal. Additional reading T.H.S. Wallace (ed.), The Works of George Fox, 8 vol. (1831, reprinted 1990); Harry Emerson Wildes, Voice of The Lord: A Biography of George Fox (1965); Douglas Gwyn, Apocalypse of the Word: The Life and Message of George Fox (1986); H. Larry Ingle, First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (1994).