This excellent piece of work brings a new and fascinating seventeenth-century voice to twenty-first-century readers interested in women’s studies, literature, and history. Book M by the London widow Katherine Austen lends itself well to modernization, which Professor Hammons has handled in a light and tactful manner. This book will be an excellent choice for classes on life writing in general and on early modern women’s writing in particular, and it will be a great contextual reading for courses on British Restoration culture and literature.
—Margaret J. M. Ezell
Distinguished Professor of English and John and Sara Lindsay Chair of Liberal Arts Texas A&M University