Women's Life Writing and Early Modern Ireland

Womens 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 womens life writing in a specifically Irish context. By shifting the focus away from Englandeven though many of these writers would have identified themselves as Englishand making Ireland and Irishness the focus of their essays, the contributors resituate womens 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 Ormondewomen from the two most important families in seventeenth-century Irelandalso 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.