Convent Autobiography: Early Modern English Nuns in Exile [Hardcover]

Convent Autobiographyexplores the ways in which cloistered women evaluated and articulated their senses of self through letters, chronicles, accounts and other such genres. The book explores writings by women who composed under their own names and those who composed anonymously and considers three case studies devoted to anonymous chronicling.Convent Autobiographyreveals how English Catholic women wrote about themselves, their families, and their lives in a period where it was illegal to practice Catholicism in England. These nuns went into a two-fold kind of exile for their beliefs. They moved abroad and they died to the world , trying to cut ties with family and friends. Yet their convents needed support from outsiders to thrive. The nuns studied here reveal how they navigated this through their letters, printed works, paintings, and prayers. Often times these women wrote anonymously, a common practice for nuns, monks, and devout people of many religious persuasions up until the twentieth century. But anonymity was not just a neutral way of signalling humility or deep religious belief; it could allow people to write about themselves a lot more than they would have while writing under their own name. Exploring how some nuns exploited this to shape their convent's chronicle around their own points of view,Convent Autobiographyholds up a mirror to the think about the double-edged role of anonymity throughout history. This book should be welcomed by those whose own interests lie beyond the spheres of Catholic history and women's writing. The book was undoubtedly framed with a broad readership in mind. Indeed, the author at all times assists in making it as accessible as possible to those unfamiliar with the topic. -- Cormac Begadon,Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Readers will also value the glossary of conventual terms, the painstakingly detailed index and the fulsome bibliography, all of which are in keeping with the rigl�