Liberal Arts Faculty Books

The Gentlewoman’s Remembrance: Patriarchy, Piety, and Singlehood in Early Stuart England

Title

The Gentlewoman’s Remembrance: Patriarchy, Piety, and Singlehood in Early Stuart England

Files

Description

A microhistory of a never-married English gentlewoman named Elizabeth Isham, this book centres on an extremely rare piece of women's writing - a recently discovered 60,000-word spiritual autobiography held in Princeton's manuscript collections that she penned around 1639. The autobiography is unmatched in providing an inside view of her family relations, her religious beliefs, her reading habits and, most sensationally, the reasons why she chose never to marry despite desires to the contrary held by her male kin, particularly Sir John Isham, her father. Based on the autobiography, combined with extensive research of the Isham family papers now housed at the county record office in Northampton, this book restores our historical memory of Elizabeth and her female relations, expanding our understanding and knowledge about patriarchy, piety and singlehood in early modern England.

ISBN

9781526100917

Publication Date

8-1-2016

Relational Format

book

Department

Arch Dalrymple III Department of History

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Disciplines

European History | Women's Studies

The Gentlewoman’s Remembrance: Patriarchy, Piety, and Singlehood in Early Stuart England
COinS