A True Account of My Life and Selected Meditations

Book excerpt: "Born in the early 1620s to parents of Scottish descent who were servants in Charles I's household, Anne, Lady Halkett (née Murray), grew up on fringes of the English court during a period of increasing political tension. From 1644 to 1699, Halkett recorded her personal and political experiences in both England and Scotland in a series of manuscript meditations and an autobiographical narrative (A True Account of My Life). Royalism, romance, and contemporary religious debates are central to Halkett's vivid portrayal of her life as a single woman, wife, mother, and widow: collectively, the materials edited here offer the opportunity to explore how Halkett's meditational practice informed her life writing in the only version of her writings to date available in a fully modernized edition"--