Convent Autobiography

Convent Autobiography explores the ways in which cloistered women articulated their senses of self through genres such as letters, chronicles, accounts, guidance and devotional manuals, and conversion narratives. The book explores writings by early modern English women who elected a double self-exile from home and ‘from the world’, undertakings that shaped and informed so much of their self-writing. These nuns sometimes composed under their own names, but many composed anonymously. Using a combination of close reading, palaeography, manuscript evidence and other data, this book reveals the identities of half a dozen women, including descendants of Sir Thomas More, whose contributions to English literature and history were hitherto unknown. Although anonymous composition was in keeping with monastic norms of humility, Convent Autobiography argues anonymity offered paradoxical freedoms, such as enabling an author to write extensively about her own family, and herself, or to present institutional narratives through the lens of her own experiences. Three case studies devoted to anonymous chronicling reveal the complexity of authorial strategies of self and communal representation. On the basis of these, two new genres of autobiography are proposed: anonymous and subsumed autobiography. These definitions have wider application beyond convent and early modern literature. The book includes a complete edition of the vibrant conversion narrative, lists, and prayers of Catherine Holland, who defied her Protestant father by running away to join the convent of Nazareth where she could practise Catholicism and ‘escape the slavery of marriage’.