Privacy and personal narratives in the modern period
In the early modern period, as literacy rates increased, more and more people recorded their personal experiences in letters, diaries, memoirs and travelogues. Privacy in Early Modern Egodocuments: Personal Lives in Historical Perspective combines historical research with the analysis of personal narratives from Eastern, Central and Western Europe – also from a global perspective – to reveal how privacy was understood during times of intense political and social change.
The authors reflect on the evolution of the concept of privacy and the importance of egodocuments as sources for research on individual and collective memory. The focus is on the testimonies of elites, as well as those of underprivileged groups and marginalised voices, often overlooked in traditional historical research.
Editors and authors
- Prof. Michael Green– University Professor at the Philip Friedman Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Lodz and the Head of the Centre for Self-Narratives, University of Lodz; and the co-founder of the Studies in the History of Privacy series;
- Dr Joanna Orzeł (Institute of History, University of Lodz) – a researcher of the noble culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the intellectual history of the Enlightenment and travel in the modern era;
- Dr Anna Kowalcze-Pawlik (Faculty of International and Political Studies, University of Lodz) – a literary scholar, translator, President of the Polish Shakespeare Society and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Multicultural Shakespeare magazine.
The authors include researchers from various research centres, including: András Bándi, Jakub Basista, Nere Jone Intxaustegi Jauregi, Katarzyna Kuras, Bernadetta Manyś, François-Joseph Ruggiu, Robert T. Tomczak, Nataliia Voloshkova and Aleksandra Ziober.
The book is intended for researchers and advanced students interested in the social, cultural and religious history of the early modern period, as well as issues of privacy in the context of archival research and travel literature.
We encourage you to read it!
