The Written Self

Adam Nicolson traces our modern sense of self back to the time when ordinary people first took up the quill. At a time of great upheaval, writing was both a means of escape and of fighting for what youbelieved. Account books became confessionals, and letters weapons against the authorities. From an ambitious shepherd to a Quaker woman imprisoned for her conscience, rising literacy allowed people to re-write both the country's future and their own.