This collection consists of 70 sheets of microfiche containing detailed inventories in typescript for a portion of the Archives of the Methodist Church, Overseas Division (also known as the Methodist Missionary Society) in England. This Archive, housed in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, includes Methodism materials dating from 1769. The records of the Archive consist of three distinct groups: Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, Women's Work, and Primitive Methodist Missionary Society. Sheets 1 through 69 concern the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. They are inventories of selected folders of the whole collection, usually correspondence. Please note: No actual manuscripts are represented here. Sheet 70 deals with the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society. Filmed from original at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, which also possesses the original correspondence files documenting missionary work of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. Correspondence concerns the home office, Europe, North America, West Indies, West Africa, South Africa, India, Ceylon, Burma, China, and Australasia.

Researchers should consult Elizabeth Bennett's Methodist Missionary Society Archives: Guide, available in both the Archives Reading Room and the Microform Room. This contains a listing of all records held as part of the Methodist Missionary Society collection. Files noted in that guide with an asterisk are those which are inventoried in detail on the microfiche in this collection. The Bennett guide was intended to serve as a finding aid to the microfiche edition of the Methodist Missionary Society collection, as yet unfinished in 1982.