Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, 1590–1676

This edition of Anne Clifford’s (1590–1676) diaries and memoirs is the first to include all of her autobiographical writing. Clifford was a prominent noble woman who writes about her experiences in the courts of Elizabeth, James and Charles I. She tells the story of her decades long battle to secure her inheritance of the Clifford lands of the north, which included taking on powerful men like James I. She describes the challenges she faced when she finally inherited the Clifford lands, torn by civil war, poverty and neglect. Her writings about her life reveal her joys and griefs, including the loss of children. Anne Clifford was vulnerable and determined, charitable and canny. Her diaries and memoirs provide a window into the life and thoughts of this indomitable woman.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 The Lady Anne Clifford’s Memoir, 1603 2 Countess of Dorset’s Diary, 1616, 1617 and 1619 3 The Life of Me the Lady Anne Clifford, 1589–1649 4 The Lady of the North, Yearly Memoirs, 1650–75 5 Countess of Pembroke’s Daybook, 1676 Index

About the Author :
Jessica L. Malay is Professor of English Renaissance Literature at the University of Huddersfield

Review :
‘The edition succeeds in rendering the text of the Great Books far more accessible than hitherto, and so represents a significant milestone in the study of the manuscripts created under the countess’s direction. Professor Malay’s hope that it ‘will encourage greater interest in and scholarship on Anne Clifford’ will surely be realised.’ David X. Carpenter, University of Oxford, EHR, February 2018 ‘Anne Clifford’s Autobiographical Writing, 1590-1676, Jessica Malay’s newest contribution to Anne Clifford Studies, is a much-needed, comprehensive edition of Clifford’s extensive autobiographical corpus, as well as a perfect complement to Malay’s 201 edition of Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record. Clifford is a familiar name among scholars of early modern Englishwomen’s life writing in part because of the sheer amount she produced. Clifford developed a complex, interconnected system of self-accounting that involved daily diary-like entries, yearly memoirs and biographical narratives about family members past and present that worked in tandem with her antiquarian projects and legal battles. Indeed, nearly all of her labor – textual and otherwise – contributed to her lengthy, and ultimately successful, quest to gain what she believed to be her rightful inheritance (extensive properties that her father, George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, had designated to his brother instead). But Clifford continued to record the events of her and her family members’ lives long after she secured here inheritance in 1643 and, indeed, right up to the day before she died. Clifford’s life writing demonstrates a woman’s agency in action, provides a snapshot of antiquarian trends and techniquest in seventeenth-century England, sheds lights on elite English culture during this period, and contributes to ongoing conversations about the nature of auto/biography in early modern England.’ Julie A. Eckerle, University of Minnesota, Morris, Early Modern Women Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 2019 'These memoirs, and the diary and daybook that bookend Malay's well-edited and annotated volume, will be invaluable to scholars and students of the period looking for a window into a remarkable life and the deliberate acts of autobiographical preservation-both literary and material-that memorialize that life.' Seventeenty-Century News