Ego non sum Ego: John Dunton and the Consolations of Print

Through an exploration of the autobiographical writings of John Dunton, this essay interrogates the technology of printing as a means of accumulating immaterial goods for middle-class citizens in the seventeenth century. Dunton, a bookseller and prolific producer of autobiographical materials, saw in the technology of print—and particularly in the genre of popular autobiography—an opportunity for psychic as well as social mobility. Even more than an avenue for financial success, Dunton understood print to be a means of moving himself out of less tangible but still straitened conditions, including marital strife, anxiety, loneliness, and even the fear of death. For Dunton, print represented not a “stigma” but a mode of reparation, and one available to anyone who could scrape together the means to bring his private musings into the public eye.