Mother Ann Lee: Morning Star of the Shakers

By Nardi Reeder Campion

Book Overview

The definitive biography of the founder of the Shaker movement, whose remarkable life is the subject of a new film, The Testament of Ann Lee.

This acclaimed, accessible, and thoroughly researched biography documents the life of Ann Lee, a controversial, religious leader and early feminist figure. Lee established the Shaker movement in 1770 in Manchester, England. The core principles of the Shakers were radical: in an era when wives were the possession of their husband, Lee proclaimed the equality of men and women. The Shakers were dedicated to beliefs in absolute pacifism, equality of the sexes, absolute celibacy, and the cleansing of sin through dancing and chanting to shake away the past.

The Shakers sought inner peace and harmony, but their unusual beliefs, including total abstinence from sex and their exhibitions of mystical ecstasy were considered suspect and led to the imprisonment of Lee and her followers. While jailed, Lee experienced a blinding, soul-splitting vision which reaffirmed her belief in celibacy and named her the second coming of Christ. Seeking religious freedom, she led her followers, known as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, from England to settle in upstate New York, near Albany.

Mother Ann Lee died in 1784, but her movement continued to grow into the nineteenth century with at least eighteen utopian Shaker communities in Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Ohio. Today many of those Shaker settlements are museums. The last remaining Shaker community is at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village near Poland, Maine. Maine. The Testament of Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried, drew on this book among other sources to tell Lee's story.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1684583381
• ISBN13: 9781684583386
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Length: 180 Pages

Customer Reviews

Clear, well-detailed biography

Whilst it is fair to say that this book gives very little surprising information for those who have spent a good deal of time reading about Shakerism, it does give a very useful account of the life of the most important figure in the history of that religion. "Mother Ann Lee: Morning Star Of The Shakers" gives a well-balanced and clear detail an account of the life of Ann Lee from the time of her birth in Manchester to her coming to new England to start the first Shaker colonies. It then goes on to describe the way in which she set up these Shaker colonies and explains the qualities that allowed her to set up what was (in some ways at least) a very demanding way of life. What is important about this book is that it is very well-balanced and in no way can it be said that Campion was anything other than very fair in the way in which she looked at the pre-Shaker life of Ann Lee: indeed, what emphasis there is in the text tends to focus on Ann's early days as a married woman. As far as the parts dealing with Ann's life as Shaker leader, there is nothing remotely new or in any way shocking, but Campion redeems herself by the balance and fairness with which she writes about an often misunderstood subject. In addition, her writing is remarkable, compared with most books dealing with Shakers or shakerism, for the ease with which someone with no knowledge of this still-fascinating sect can read it. Though it merely restates well-known aspects of Shaker history, the balance and reader-friendly character of this book makes it ideal as an introduction to Shakerism for the curious.