This volume historicizes the study of life-writing and egodocuments, focusing on early modern European reflections on the self, self-fashioning, and identity. Life-writing and the study of egodocuments currently tend to be viewed as separate fields, yet the individual as a purposive social actor provides significant common ground and offers a vehicle, both theoretical and practical, for a profitable synthesis of the two in a historical context. Echoing scholars from a wide-range of disciplines who recognize the uncertainty of the nature of the self, these essays question the notion of the...