Women’s Autobiographies

A photograph of a large, sandy colored building with a turret on the corner facing the photographer and large bay windows. Plants and ivy creep up its walls.
A photograph of Lacock Abbey, home of Grace Mildmay, taken in 2013 by Barry Skeates. The abbey was remodeled from its origins as an Augustinian convent by Mildmay’s father-in-law in the middle of the 16th century. It is presumably the location at which she wrote her medical recipes after the death of her husband in 1617. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

Overview

Para1During the early modern period, and especially with the rise of Puritanism, many literate women began to keep diaries or write autobiographies that focused on their spiritual lives. Women may have been encouraged by their spiritual advisors to keep a record of their prayers, their devotional lives, and their reflections on scripture. The women writers discussed here did autobiographical writing with a focus on their religious convictions and practices, a kind of ledger of their spirituality.

Grace, Lady Mildmay (1552–1620)

Para2Grace Sharington, later the wife of Sir Anthony Mildmay, was the daughter of a Wiltshire knight. She was educated at home in Protestant religious practices, as well as all the skills expected of a gentlewoman, including household management such as preparing medicine and elaborate foods, music, and needlework. At age 15, she married Anthony Mildmay, the son of the chancellor of the Exchequer. Unlike many marriages among the upper classes, their marriage settlement, including a dowry and jointure, was not written out, which led to both of them feuding with various members of their families for many years over issues of money and property.
Para3Grace Mildmay developed her medical ability at a higher level than many of her peers. She wrote extensively about the causes and treatments of illnesses and the preparation of various medicines to treat them. Her surviving papers indicate she investigated and supervised the manufacture of large batches of complex medicines using both herbal and chemical formulations. She documents the cordials, potions, and ointments she used to treat both mental and physical ailments. She did not perform any surgery or keep records of her patients.
Para4Her Autobiography was written from about 1617–1620, after the death of her husband. This document acts as an introduction to hundreds of pages of spiritual meditations she kept for many decades prior. It develops a picture of her upbringing as a member of the gentry and a writer willing to autonomously publish her moral and spiritual advice. She documents her extensive spiritual and moral education under the directives of her very strict parents, as well as the long battles with various family members over her inheritance. Mildmay’s strong voice and extensive medical skills, however, do not override her acceptance of the gender norms of her time. Paraphrasing 1 Timothy 2.11–12, she comments that a woman’s role is to learn with silence and all subjection and neither usurp authority over the man, but be in silence (qtd. in Bedford 171).
Para5She notes her reason for composing the Autobiography:
All these things coming into my mind, I thought good to set them down to my daughter and her children, as familiar talk and communication with them, I being dead, as if I were alive. And I do therewthall heartily pray them to accept thereof, and of the whole book of my meditations, which hath been the exercise of my mind from my youth until this day. (qtd. in Martin 213)

Margaret, Lady Hoby (1571–1633)

Para6Margaret Dakins was raised in Yorkshire, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman. An heiress educated in the household of Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntington, she was married three times to prominent younger sons of influential families. Her first husband was Walter Devereaux, brother to the second Earl of Essex who later rebelled against Elizabeth I. Her second husband was Thomas Sidney, brother to the courtier and poet, Sir Philip Sidney. Widowed for the second time by the age of 24, in 1596 she married the puritan politician, Sir Thomas Hoby. She had no children.
Para7Lady Hoby’s diary provides the first diary of an Elizabethan woman’s daily life, mainly a detailed record of her religious pursuits, including daily prayer, meditation, and reading. This account of Lady Hoby’s spiritual discipline downplays her other daily activities. But the diary also reveals how she managed her husband’s estates during his frequent absences, how she dealt with her many servants, and her interests in music and gardening. Several fascinating passages detail her attending on women in childbirth or refer to the medical advice and treatment she provided to her servants and local citizens, such as when an infant born without an anus was brough to her. She performed surgery on the child to no avail in an attempt to find an outlet for the child’s bowels (Bedford 183).
Para8Margaret Hoby also explains that she resisted her last husband’s pressure to gift property from her first marriage, a manor in Hackness, to him and his heirs until the year before her death. Although the diary focuses on her spiritual devotions within her everyday life, readers may enjoy the nonreligious details to build up a picture of her domestic life.

Key Print Sources

Bedford, Ronald et al. A Gendered Genre: Autobiographical Writings by Three Early Modern Women in Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-Representation 1550–1660. Ashgate, 2007.
Martin, Randall. Women Writers in Renaissance England. Addison Wesley Longman, 1997.
Moody, Joanna. The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Dairy of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599–1605. Sutton Publishing, 1998.
Pollock, Linda A. Mildmay née Sharington, Grace, Lady Mildmay (c. 1552–1620), Memoirist and Medical Practitioner. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 22. Oxford University Press, 23 Sep. 2004.
Slack, Paul. Hoby née Dakins, Margaret, Lady Hoby (bap. 1571, d. 1633), Diarist. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 10. Oxford University Press, 23 Sep. 2004.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. Lady Margaret Hoby. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/women%20writers/hoby.html. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.
Biehl, Brighid. Medicine and Autonomy in Early Modern Europe. Domestic Knowledge. 2023. https://domesticknowledge.pubpub.org/pub/4vz98t0v.

Image Sources

Skeates, Barry. Photograph of Lacock Abbey. 4 Jun. 2013. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lacock_Abbey_(9040853954).jpg.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Katelyn Ekker

Katelyn Ekker was an Honors student at Utah Valley University.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Women’s Autobiographies
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Katelyn Ekker and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
License/availability
Unless otherwise noted, intellectual copyright in EMEE Anthology pages is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.