Betraying Our Selves

This is a lively study of the autobiographical instinct in a variety of 16th and 17th century modes of writing in English, from letters and memoirs to pastoral, polemic and street ballads. The book's central concern is how "e;selves"e; are "e;betrayed"e; in texts, particularly in the centuries before the autobiography was a recognized genre. It suggests that self-representation in the early modern period was often indirect, emerging in oblique and surprising ways.