The Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis Bacon, 1613-1644

|The letters of Jane Lady Cornwallis Bacon, 16131644, offer the richly illuminating story of a loving mother and devoted friend. Cumulatively, they provide an unfolding, sometimes self-dramatizing, narrative that details the life of a privileged woman and her family throughout the turbulent years of the early seventeenth century. The correspondents vary from closest relations to distant friends, and readers share in the pleasures and disappointments that form a natural part of daily life. The readiness of families such as this to write directly, rather than to dictate through secretaries, makes the literary outcome more personal and intimate, more expressive of inner feeling and shared sensitivity. In consequence, the letters carry their own truth across the ages.