Given "segments of the population who were wary of the negative effects of the period's political culture: those who felt nostalgia for a simpler, more traditional, world; who found the pace, volume, ...and intensity of public discussion alienating or overwhelming; or who felt marginalized by or merely indifferent to the rhetorical maneuverings and ponderous obfuscations of disputatious prose" (161–162), the time was right for a simpler-seeming form of narrative. ...she claims, "the life, in its many printed and populist incarnations, was put to specific partisan and illiberal ends, seemingly detached from political conflict but implicated fully in its ideological aims and effects" (165). Each case study is patient, methodical, detail-oriented, and carefully situated in individual, political, and historical contexts. When Walkden says of the seventeenth century that in "replacing arguments with human interest stories that prove more emotionally satisfying and easier to follow, biographical narratives perform their work of persuasion at a remove from the controversies they seek to influence" (96), she reminds us of the human qualities that lead individuals to compose life stories as well as to read them.
Women's Life Writing and Early Modern Irelandprovides an original perspective on both new and familiar texts in this first critical collection to focus on seventeenth-century women's life writing in ...a specifically Irish context. By shifting the focus away from England-even though many of these writers would have identified themselves as English-and making Ireland and Irishness the focus of their essays, the contributors resituate women's narratives in a powerful and revealing landscape. This volume addresses a range of genres, from letters to book marginalia, and a number of different women, from now-canonical life writers such as Mary Rich and Ann Fanshawe to far less familiar figures such as Eliza Blennerhassett and the correspondents and supplicants of William King, archbishop of Dublin. The writings of the Boyle sisters and the Duchess of Ormonde-women from the two most important families in seventeenth-century Ireland-also receive a thorough analysis. These innovative and nuanced scholarly considerations of the powerful influence of Ireland on these writers' construction of self, provide fresh, illuminating insights into both their writing and their broader cultural context.
Although Ireland figures large in the life writing, or auto/biographical writing, of early modern Englishwomen, the past few decades' attention to early modern women's life writing has given little ...attention to the presence of Ireland in these texts or, more significantly, to the formative role of Ireland on the writers' world views and textual choices. In this essay, therefore, I provide a survey of the four most common representations of Ireland that appear in this body of work. These include an idealized version of Ireland as a mini‐England; the inverse depiction of Ireland as a kind of nightmare landscape; and slightly less morally laden versions of Ireland as a site of rich potential for individual transformation or as a land of mystery and somewhat exoticized otherness. Although Irishwomen's narratives about Ireland also deserve more attention, and although the question of individual identity—including “English” and “Irish”—is incredibly fraught in this particular context, this initial survey will create a foundation on which further scholarship can be built.
Abstract
Although Ireland figures large in the life writing, or auto/biographical writing, of early modern Englishwomen, the past few decades' attention to early modern women's life writing has given ...little attention to the presence of Ireland in these texts or, more significantly, to the formative role of Ireland on the writers' world views and textual choices. In this essay, therefore, I provide a survey of the four most common representations of Ireland that appear in this body of work. These include an idealized version of Ireland as a mini‐England; the inverse depiction of Ireland as a kind of nightmare landscape; and slightly less morally laden versions of Ireland as a site of rich potential for individual transformation or as a land of mystery and somewhat exoticized otherness. Although Irishwomen's narratives about Ireland also deserve more attention, and although the question of individual identity—including “English” and “Irish”—is incredibly fraught in this particular context, this initial survey will create a foundation on which further scholarship can be built.
Women’s Life Writing and Early Modern Ireland provides an original perspective on both new and familiar texts in this first critical collection to focus on seventeenth-century ...women’s life writing in a specifically Irish context. By shifting the focus away from England—even though many of these writers would have identified themselves as English—and making Ireland and Irishness the focus of their essays, the contributors resituate women’s narratives in a powerful and revealing landscape. This volume addresses a range of genres, from letters to book marginalia, and a number of different women, from now-canonical life writers such as Mary Rich and Ann Fanshawe to far less familiar figures such as Eliza Blennerhassett and the correspondents and supplicants of William King, archbishop of Dublin. The writings of the Boyle sisters and the Duchess of Ormonde—women from the two most important families in seventeenth-century Ireland—also receive a thorough analysis. These innovative and nuanced scholarly considerations of the powerful influence of Ireland on these writers’ construction of self, provide fresh, illuminating insights into both their writing and their broader cultural context.   
Dowd and Eckerle examine the autograph volume of 17th-century Englishwoman Dorothy Calthorpe. The writings offer a glimpse into the creative and spiritual musings of a devout, unmarried woman of a ...locally important gentry family, the Calthorpes of Ampton, County Suffolk. In particular, Calthorpe's work reveals the dynamic relationship between secular and spiritual genres and creatively intervenes in the construction and refashioning of familial genealogy. Her manuscript includes two short devotional pieces: a description of the Garden of Eden and a dream vision recounting the speaker's journey to heaven. These devotional writings configure Protestant spiritual spaces--Eden and heaven--in decidedly aristocratic terms, figuring spiritual grace and perfection in and through praise of elite consumerism and material goods. In doing so, they also address pressing concerns about the nature of sin, the contours of Christian stewardship, and the proper path to salvation.
