How did individuals write about their lives before a modern tradition of diaries and autobiographies was established? Adam Smyth examines the kinds of texts that sixteenth or seventeenth-century individuals produced to register their life, in the absence of these later, dominant templates. The book explores how readers responded to, and improvised with, four forms the almanac, the financial account, the commonplace book and the parish register to create written records of their lives. Early modern autobiography took place across these varied forms, often through a lengthy process of...