This chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore what people said about themselves, in whatever terms or forms they used. The method has been determined in large part by simple curiosity about individual texts and their writers in this period. It begins with a very loose definition of autobiography so as to include as many different kinds of texts as possible, and with similarly loose expectations about the writers. Some of the texts illustrate what we know abstractly, but others can expand and refine existing generalizations about the early modern subject. The range of material...

This chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore what people said about themselves, in whatever terms or forms they used. The method has been determined in large part by simple curiosity about individual texts and their writers in this period. It begins with a very loose definition of autobiography so as to include as many different kinds of texts as possible, and with similarly loose expectations about the writers. Some of the texts illustrate what we know abstractly, but others can expand and refine existing generalizations about the early modern subject. The range of material offers fascinating glimpses of the variety of lived—and imagined—experiences, in great houses, at court, on a tenant farm, in London rooms and streets. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.