Almanacs, Annotators, and Life‐Writing in Early Modern England

Abstract

An exploration of one of the most common but least studied early modern forms of life‐writing, the annotated almanac, is long overdue. Printed almanacs were often interleaved with blank pages, onto which readers added notes of their activities: journeys; illnesses; resolutions. By examining a number of annotated almanacs, and by focusing in particular on the Civil War almanacs of Lady Isabella Twysden, this essay examines the relationship between printed almanac and manuscript annotations, and the connection between annotated almanacs and those categories which organise recent critical discussions of life‐writing: identity, subjectivity, autobiography, diary, self. Materials added to almanacs were often later transferred to other texts: diarists often generated a life through a process of shunting material from text to text, starting with an almanac, expanding records with each movement. The production of diaries was less about directly transcribing lived experience, and more the result of revising prior texts. Many features of diaries can be explained through reference back to the almanac as a first or early site where notes on a life began. This founding compositional moment shaped later diaries: the expectations the almanac created, the subjects and vocabularies it induced, informed later written lives.

”12.7. Selim tulee luokseni” – menneiden elämien tarkastelua queer-näkökulmasta

“…Tällaisissa muodoissa eri aikatasot sekoittuvat vielä ilmeisemmin kuin niin sanotuissa perinteisissä päiväkirjoissa. Almanakoilla ja erityisesti tämän tyyppisillä muistikirjamaisilla almanakoilla onkin tärkeä rooli elämänkerronnan varhaisena muotona ja modernin päiväkirjan esiasteena (Smyth 2008;Sjö & Leskelä-Kärki 2020, 13). Käytämme tästä eteenpäin selvyyden vuoksi näistä Janssonin vihoista käsitettä päiväkirja, sillä myös museon aineistoissa ja aineistoviitteissä puhutaan nimenomaan päiväkirjoista (dagbok) näihin aineistoihin viitattaessa.…”

What Betty did: charting everyday activity over the life course

“…Diaries, autobiographies and life histories can also provide valuable details of everyday activities. The character and purpose of self-writing has changed over time, and personal accounts of various kinds have been used quite extensively in historical research (Delap, 2011;Ezell, 2016;Griffin, 2013;Humphries, 2010;Moran, 2015;Pooley, 2017;Pooley & Pooley, 2010;Smyth, 2008). However, it is rare for surviving personal diaries to span a long enough time period to cover a full life course, and the limitations of diary evidence are well known: their survival is sporadic; few diaries survive for the poorest members of society; women (especially young women) were more likely to write diaries than were men; and there is no way of knowing what was omitted from a personal record (Fothergill, 1974;Hewitt, 2006;Nussbaum, 1988;Sherman, 2005;Summerfield, 2019).…”

Diaries are ‘better than novels, more accurate than histories, and even at times more dramatic than plays’: Revisiting the diary for creative writers

“…Isabella Twysden made abundant notes in this way in her almanac, for instance when she noted a death: 'mrs dendy a religious good woman and my very good friend left this life, for a better, the 30. of nov: 1647 [sic]' (qtd in Smyth 2008: 230). Information recorded in these almanacs related to such concerns as family births and deaths, health issues, weather, travel, and matters related to employment, financial, legal and husbandry activities (Mackrill 2011;Smyth 2008) and, as such a repository, began to be used as a tool to plan and order its users' lives (Smyth 2008), in a way not unlike the way the modern calendar-daily planner is used. Diaries evolved as these annotations were moved from one almanac to another, in the process undergoing an enriching process of revision and amendment.…”

“…Diaries evolved as these annotations were moved from one almanac to another, in the process undergoing an enriching process of revision and amendment. Many proto-diaries of this time, therefore, were primarily the result of rewriting prior texts rather than the direct and spontaneous description of daily life in 'real time' (Smyth 2008), the writing process more akin to that of writing memoir or family history than personal diarising.…”