The Oxford History of Life Writing: Volume 2. Early Modern

The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume2. Early Modern traces exciting developments in the writing of biographies, autobiographies, and diaries, from 1500 to 1700. In fifteen richly-researched case studies, it shows how new forms began to challenge established classical and medieval models. The English Reformation banished the saints’ lives that dominated the writings of medieval Catholicism, only to replace them with new lives of Protestant martyrs. Novel forms of self-accounting came into existence: from the daily moral self-accounting dictated by strands of Calvinism, to the daily financial self-accounting modelled on the new double-entry book-keeping. The chapters feature a mix of familiar names, including Samuel Pepys, John Aubrey, Thomas More, and Izaak Walton, and lesser-known but intriguing figures.