A pioneering, diverse collection that provides insight into the powerful motive of self-expression that inspired women autobiographers around the eighteenth century.
A wide array of documents, many of which have been unavailable since their original publication, is included: memoirs of individual and family life, travel narratives, letters, appeals for funds, testimonies of spiritual conversion, and scandalous memoirs. The writers represented here range from ladies to servants, from spinsters to courtesans, from actresses to poets, from wronged wives to wives of men engaged in British colonization.
A comprehensive introduction by the editors explores the material conditions of women's lives in Restoration and eighteenth-century Britain and critically examines the genre of autobiography. Each selection is preceded by an explanatory headnote that places the document in its historical, cultural, and social contexts.
