List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introduction; J .Daybell Reaction, Consolation and Redress in the Letters of the Paston Women; R.Dalrymple Letter Writing by English Noblewomen in the Early Fifteenth Century; J.Ward Commanding Communications: The Fifteenth-Century Letters of the Stonor Women; A.Truelove Female Literary and the Social Conventions of Women's Letter Writing in England, 1540-1603; J.Daybell Deference and Defiance in Women's Letters of the Thynne Family; A.Wall Fighting for Family in a Patronage Society: The Epistolary Armoury of Anne Newdigate (1574-1618); V.Larminie 'How Subject to Interpretation': Lady Arbella Stuart and the Reading of Illness; S.J.Steen Tudor and Stuart Women: Their Family Lives Through Their Letters; R.O'Day Patriarchy, Puritanism and Politics: The Letters of Lady Brilliana Harley (1598-1643); J.Eales 'Doe not supose me a well mortifyed Nun dead to the world': Letter Writing in Early Modern English Convents; C.Walker Gentle Companions: Single Women and Their Letters in Late-Stuart England; S.Whyman 'Begging Pardon for all mistakes and errors in this writing I being a women and doing it myself': Family Narratives in Some Early Eighteenth-Century Letters; A.Laurence Notes and References Index