ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that, for many early modern women, life writing was a valuable form of stewardship that provided a personal and intellectual means of understanding and managing identity. This framing highlights the unique labor, skill, and ethics involved in women's life writing, as a detailed examination of early modern stewardship makes clear. The chapter also provides several examples of female life writers whose texts work to steward the life and legacy of their subjects, including Dorothy Calthorpe (1648–1693), whose use of the term “dapifer,” a kind of steward, makes explicit the stewarding function of her own and others’ life writing.
