We are pleased to announce that the Church Historian’s Press, the publisher of The Joseph Smith Papers, has recently released two significant publications that may be of interest to friends of the Joseph Smith Papers.
The story begins with the founding of the Nauvoo Female Relief Society in 1842, and the complete and unabridged minutes of that organization are reproduced for the first time in print. The large majority of the print volume covers the even lesser-known period after the Relief Society was reestablished in territorial Utah and began to spread to areas as remote as Hawaii and England.
The Church Historian’s Press website features selections from The First Fifty Years of Relief Society, including the volume introduction and the entire Nauvoo Female Relief Society Minute Book. The website also includes a bibliography, historical photographs, videos, and four hundred brief biographies of prominent figures from the documents.
Journal of George Q. Cannon
On April 14, the press released the Journal of George Q. Cannon, an online-only publication. Cannon’s remarkable journal, contained in fifty physical volumes and spanning almost five decades, is one of the most insightful and detailed records in Mormon history.
Next to Brigham Young, George Q. Cannon was arguably the best-known Latter-day Saint in the last half of the nineteenth century. Cannon was an editor and publisher, a businessman, an educator, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a territorial delegate in Congress, and a counselor in the First Presidency, the highest council in the Church.
If you are interested in additional information on Church Historian’s Press publications like the ones mentioned above, you can sign up to receive email updates from the press.