Personal disclosures: an anthology of self-writings from the seventeenth century

The seventeenth century saw a dramatic increase in self-writing-from the private jotting down of personal thoughts in an irregular and spontaneous way, to the carefully considered composition of extended autobiographical narrative and deliberate self-fashioning for public consumption.

Recent anthologies of women's writing, drawing to some extent on this rich but relatively little-known archive, have demonstrated the importance of studying such material to gain insight into female lives in that era.