Her Own Life

Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby, Helen Wilcox

'This fascinating collection is a valuable contribution not only to the study of autobiography, but also to wider feminist and historicist debates.' - Notes and Queries'The texts collected in - Her Own Life are introduced by a lucid discussion of the theoretical limitations of contemporary criticism on the subject of autobiography ... The authors are particularly successful in their explanation of the political differences that divided and changed the position of women during and after the Civil War ... The anthology collects material otherwise difficult to find and offers a wide perspective over a period hardly discussed in the critical studies of women's autobiographical writing so far.'` - Her Own Life is more than a breath of fresh air in the reception and anthologising of texts by early modern women. The editors introduce a variety of ways of thinking about the `self' in language that keeps a reader moving between contemporary ways of reading `autobiography' and seventeenth-century questions and issues which have stuctured the narratives ... The range of material introduced must make us readjust our thoughts about gender, genre and history ... A very valuable teaching text of non-canonical writing from the radical traditions of the seventeenth century.'

• Chapter 1 Anne Clifford; Chapter 2 An Collins; Chapter 3 Anna Trapnel; Chapter 4 Margaret Cavendish; Chapter 5 Susanna Parr; Chapter 6 Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers; Chapter 7 Mary Carleton; Chapter 8 Alice Thornton; Chapter 9 Sarah Davy; Chapter 10 Anne Wentworth; Chapter 11 Hannah Allen; Chapter 12 Joan Vokins;