Autobiography in Early Modern England

Explores life-writing forms - almanacs, financial accounts, commonplace books and parish registers - which emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Adam Smyth (Author)

9780521761727, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 August 2010

234 pages, 7 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15 x 1.8 cm, 0.52 kg

'… where Smyth truly triumphs is in the care and sensitivity with which he describes his archival material … Full of warmth, humour, and a humane inquisitiveness, such acts of close reading lie at the heart of Smyth's book, and the delicacy with which they are elaborated belies the daunting archival expertise upon which they rely. No student of early modern culture will fail to be moved by them … magisterial and surely unrivalled … [this book] deserves a wide and appreciative audience.' Andrea Walkden, Renaissance Quarterly

How did individuals write about their lives before a modern tradition of diaries and autobiographies was established? Adam Smyth examines the kinds of texts that sixteenth- or seventeenth-century individuals produced to register their life, in the absence of these later, dominant templates. The book explores how readers responded to, and improvised with, four forms - the almanac, the financial account, the commonplace book and the parish register - to create written records of their lives. Early modern autobiography took place across these varied forms, often through a lengthy process of transmission and revision of written documents. This book brings a dynamic, surprising culture of life-writing to light, and will be of interest to anyone studying autobiography or early modern literature.

Acknowledgements
Note on references
Introduction
1. Almanacs and annotators
2. Financial accounting
3. Commonplace book lives: 'a very applicative story'
4. Entries and exits: finding life in parish registers
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]