2010/06/01 by Anne Cotterill
Arts and Humanities · #Early Modern Women Writers #Literature: history, themes, analysis #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes
paper · doi:10.1525/hlq.2010.73.2.225
Elizabeth Isham's Booke of Rememberance illuminates the inner life of an early modern Englishwoman who chose not to marry, and shows the importance of books to seventeenth-century women confronting illness and melancholy. Isham's habit from youth of copying passages from reading that might suit her own and others' needs for comfort prepared her to fit textual fragments together for her own healing. Anne Cotterill shows how Isham's learning and application of scripture, as part of a lifelong conversation with God and search for spiritual assurance, became compelling nourishment for her intellectual and emotional life.