The Creation of the Self in Autobiographical Forms of Writing in Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract

This study explores a selection of seventeenth-century memoirs, diaries and letters to show how attempts at literary self-fashioning led to the establishment of a tradition of secular autobiography in England. Samples of self-writing by Margaret Cavendish, Ann Fanshawe, Anne Halkett, Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn, Dorothy Osborne and John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester) are examined as texts which originated at the intersection of various factors, such as the social and political upheaval during the midcentury, the new sense of self evoked by changes in science, philosophy, and religion, and the general movement at the time towards subjectivity in almost all literary genres. This study furthermore argues that the turn towards literary self-fashioning was conducive to the development of the English novel.