Women's Life Writing in Early Modern Scotland: Writing the Evangelical Self, c. 1670-c1730 (review)

Many Scots paid with their lives for their 'Protestant recusancy' in early modern Scotland – as in the infamous case of Margaret MacLachlan and Mary Wilson who, for their beliefs, were tied to stakes on the treacherous tidal flats at Wigton, Dumfrieshire, and drowned in 1685. While this is one of the forms of surviving evidence of women's spiritual beliefs, the overwhelming form is of middling and aristocratic women's unpublished writings about their religiosity, preserved in surviving manuscript journals as well as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century published transcriptions. These religious writings often represent the only account of these women's lives. Women's evangelical writing provides an insight into the personal, private and spiritual revelations recorded and/or recounted by women.

This volume by David G. Mullan is the latest in the Contemporary Editions series which is 'the sister series' to Early Modern Englishwoman 1500-1750. Confusingly the front cover of Mullan's volume contains an emboss stamp listing both series: above appears 'The Early Modern Englishwoman 1500-1750'; and below 'Contemporary Editions'. Given the Scottish content of this volume, even with the explanatory provision provided by the general editors inside the volume, the inclusion of both series titles on the cover sits awkwardly. The Contemporary Editions are 'designed to provide distinguished editions… of writings not only by but also for and about early modern women', and the 'volumes include long, interpretive essays and range widely in format from anthologies to single texts' (p. viii). Inspired by feminist and gender concerns they cover aspects of monastic rule, love, literature, politics, and writings of the spiritual self.

It is therefore heartening amongst these two series with their predominance of texts by English women to see the inclusion of Scottish women's Presbyterian evangelical writings c.1670-c.1730. The immense value of these volumes lies in the ongoing recovery and publication of diverse evidence of women's writings that have not been readily accessible to students and specialist scholars alike. The strength of Mullan's volume (p. 5) is that it 'is not an anthology', but rather a presentation of eight women's writing 'in unabridged form, with [footnote] annotations'. Mullan's collection is (p. 5) 'a cohesive and complete body of literature, defined by religion and time.' The greatest strength of this volume is in the words of Katharine Collace (Mistress Ross), Jean Collace, Lilias Dunbar (Mrs Campbell), Helen Alexander (Mrs Currie), Agnes Paton, Katherine Hamilton (duchess of Atholl) and Elizabeth Blackadder (Mrs Young).

This volume is a by-product of Mullan's previous body of work on Scottish Protestantism. It is important to realise that much of Scotland's history lies in private manuscript collections held on deposit in the National Library of Scotland or the National Archives, which are subject to the serious access and publication restrictions. Mullan's work draws heavily on his access to these restricted collections. The book is divided into two main sections: the support material including the introduction, editorial practice, glossaries of evangelical piety and Scotticisms and archaisms; and 'The Narratives' of eight women, each of which is accompanied by a brief biographical account. Here the biographical material needed to be more clearly separated by subheading from the women's text. The volume also contains a bibliography of manuscript, printed and secondary sources, as well as a useful index of Biblical Citations.

The introduction provides a contextual account of the nature of this collection of women's 'Protestant confessional' writings that 'focused on the interior life' (p. 2). Mullan includes his grounds for selection and exclusion of women's writing, as well as the identification of those works known to have been written but no longer extant, such as the writing of Elizabeth Brodie (Mrs Nimmo). He includes a discussion of the authors and the conditions of female writing, as well as ministers and the sources of...