ABSTRACT
Anne Clifford’s autobiography and genealogical history constitute histories in themselves, for during the seventeenth century, these genres were not distinctly separated from the genre of history. The genealogical history consists of a documentary biography of each Viteripont and Clifford holder of title and his wife or wives. Although women were traditionally represented as marginal or as obstacles to the course of history, Clifford in fact contests such a view of history. The most marked gendering of the historical record can be found in Clifford’s entries concerning her parents—the one for her mother being much lengthier and more detailed than that for her father. Clifford rewrote the genre of male-centered history from the point of view of a female agent who seeks female precedents and exemplars. Thus she implicitly challenged patriarchy through a strategy of historical and textual interpretation, and through practicing historiography from a perspective that introduces gender as a category of historical analysis.
