Theorising Women's Self-Writing 1640-1680

Taking as its chronological timeframe the crucial years of the English Civil War and its immediate aftermath, this study examines the multiple ways in which women are able to write the self, and asks how those lives can now be interpreted. Looking at interventions in a variety of genres - including petitions, conversation narratives and prose prophecy - the project's elaboration of a newly historicised understanding of women's autobiographical output works definitively to establish the 1640-1680 period as central to a comprehensive assessment of the contemporary female speaking subject.