Elizabeth Shirley

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ES wrote but did not publish what seems to be the earliest female biography in English to be written as a memoir of someone known and loved, although it is also, as the life of an inspirational nun by another nun, something approaching hagiography.

Milestones

By September 1566

ES was born, probably at Staunton Harold Hall in Leicestershire, somewhere in the middle of a family made up of four boys and two girls.
Claire Walker in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives her place of birth as probably Shirley in Leicestershire. This placename was given by an early eighteenth-century visitor to her convent, but corrected by her family historian to Staunton.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Shirley, Evelyn Philip. Stemmata Shirleiana. Nichols and Sons.
81 and n
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

1616 or 1626

ES composed The lyfe of our moste reverent mother Margrit Clement, the former prioress of St Ursula's at Louvain; it is probably the earliest biography of a woman written in English from first-hand acquaintance.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives this date (in 2014) as 1626, while Dorothy L. Latz placed the composition in 1616.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Latz, Dorothy L., editor. “Neglected Writings by Recusant Women”. Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th-17th Centuries, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg.
26

1 September 1641

ES died in her convent of St Monica's at Louvain in what is now Belgium: she was said to be seventy-five (in the 76th year of her age)
Shirley, Evelyn Philip. Stemmata Shirleiana. Nichols and Sons.
81
at her death.
Contributions to the International Genealogical Index supply the same death date for her, but say, bizarrely, that she died at Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

By September 1566

ES was born, probably at Staunton Harold Hall in Leicestershire, somewhere in the middle of a family made up of four boys and two girls.
Claire Walker in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives her place of birth as probably Shirley in Leicestershire. This placename was given by an early eighteenth-century visitor to her convent, but corrected by her family historian to Staunton.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Shirley, Evelyn Philip. Stemmata Shirleiana. Nichols and Sons.
81 and n
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

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