Autobiography

Abstract

This chapter examines personal illness as written into seventeenth-century memoirs. Its core texts are by Alice Hayes, John Donne, Mary Rich, Anne Halkett, Alice Thornton, Richard Baxter and Robert North. These works often figure in a network of personal texts in which diaries also feature, writing up highlights of a life for posterity. Some seek to excerpt and reflect on moments of religious poignancy for use in future devotional life, others attempt to justify the author’s position in a family or social group, some both. Thorley argues that experiences (especially that of illness) in these texts are not advanced as episodes in romantic life stories, but to fulfil these social functions.