Lloyd Davis

Philippa Kelly

Ronald Bedford

Early Modern English Lives examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century autobiographical practices in key contexts and modes of self-representation. Moving between diaries, letters, journals, memoirs, household and personal accounts, and major autobiographical texts, the study explores the social and historical conditions that shaped early modern life-writing. The authors argue that expressions of personal identity, along with the notion of privacy itself, involved an elaborate interplay of generic roles and cultural discourses.

Autobiography and Self-representation, 1500-1660

Early Modern English Lives

Early Modern Autobiography considers the many ways in which autobiographical selves emerged from the late medieval period through the seventeenth century, with the aim of understanding the interaction between those individuals' lives and their worlds, the ways in which they could be recorded, and the contexts in which they are read. In addressing this historical arc, the volume develops new readings of significant autobiographical works, while also suggesting the importance of texts and contexts that have rarely been analyzed in detail, enabling the contributors to reflect on, and challenge, some prevailing ideas about what it means to write autobiographically and about the development of notions of self-representation.

Ronald Bedford

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