Henry Joel Cadbury made his mark on twentieth-century culture as a biblical scholar and teacher of world renown, a Quaker leader, and a peace and civil rights activist.

This biography of 19th-century American social activist and prison reformer Abigail-Hopper Gibbons (1801-1893) illuminates women's changing role in the various reform movements of the period. Bacon, an author and lecturer with a particular interest in women's history, gives attention to Gibbons' role in the feminist, abolitionist, prison reform, and later, the Social Purity movements, exploring the connections and tensions between these various pursuits and giving special consideration to her relationship with the Quakers.