Lady Elizabeth Delaval (1648/9–1717): Toothworms and Intertextuality

Abstract

The life-writing manuscript of Lady Elizabeth Delaval exists in a single, bound volume, into which she transcribed various notes originally composed between 1663 and 1672. 1 As Margaret J. M. Ezell has explained, 'this manuscript volume, both in its presentation and in its content, demonstrates the extent and sophistication of a young woman's concept of literary self-presentation during the Commonwealth and Restoration'. 2 This makes the text particularly interesting to literary historians: it contains a mixture of genres including autobiography, poetry, religious mediations, and prayers. Writing in a commonplace book is normally an occasion for self-reflection on real-life events, and this book is no different. Ezell identifies the voice of the manuscript as that of a 'passionate soul'. 3 However, work on this manuscript by Ezell and, more recently, Femke Molekamp and Julie A. Eckerle has shown that this compendium also displays clear evidence of the wide ranging multi-genre reading that Delaval had done. 4 The memoirs also, as Molekamp has rightly pointed out, 'reveal a fragmented selfhood', one for whom the conflicting pressures of religious piety on the one hand and secular temptations in the life of a privileged young woman, on the other, are evident. 5 As well as giving an opportunity for self-reflection, one meditation in particular demonstrates the ways that Delaval drew on other texts, religious and medical, to frame her reflective meditation. More intriguingly, research