The Grand Quarrel

This volume gathers first-person English Civil War writing by women, arranged so that household and siege run beside the public campaigns of the 1640s. The pieces include memoirs of wives who followed armies or held houses, and the letters of Brilliana, Lady Harley, from the defence of her home. Typical subjects are plunder, oaths, childbirth, loyalty to king or Parliament, and the cost of a husband's command. Royalist and Parliamentarian voices sit together. The book is a documentary anthology of women's wartime prose, not a single autobiography and not a military history of battles alone.

Bound in dark blue buckram with a repeat pattern in gold. Pale blue-grey endleaves. Dark blue slipcase.