This is a valuable collection of essays on early modern women's life writings in an Irish context. Using a broad definition of life writing, the volume's contributing authors challenge the use of autobiographical texts merely as information on women's lives, using them instead as sources on women's rhetorical craft and identity. Responding to the absence of a book on these texts in the Irish context, Julie Eckerle and Naomi McAreavey recognize their indebtedness to recovery work in early modern Irish women's literary production. Women's Life Writing and Early Modern Ireland then builds on the growing scholarship on both autobiographical writing and Irish women's writing. Although influenced by archipelagic studies, the essays here make Ireland the central focus and recognize the primacy of its relations with England. The scope of this collection is English-language texts written by women with a connection to Ireland by birth or residence. Although many of the women spent considerable time in England, Eckerle and McAreavey claim that Ireland was important to their sense of self-identity. The essays consider the complexity of English and Irish identities during this period of colonisation, with added dimensions of religion and gender.

A strength of this work is its use of archival material. Eckerle and McAreavey provide a valuable appendix that identifies both key female life writers and available sources, with Ann-Maria Walsh also detailing archival material on the Boyle family. It is hoped that the working bibliography in the appendix will be used and expanded upon in the future. The essays study a variety of sources, including narrative accounts, letters, meditations, and book inscriptions. Some are familiar sources read in a new way by considering them life writing. The scope of this book is the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although the availability of sources and the contributing authors’ areas of expertise mean that the latter century receives greater attention. The essays are arranged by genre, moving from more traditional autobiographical forms to letters and book inscriptions. Several chapters consider the extensive output of the Boyle family.

Raymond Anselment compares the narrative accounts of Alice Thornton and Elizabeth Freke, showing that Freke associated Ireland with her troubles and did not find the sense of belonging there that Thornton did. His essay is informed by an awareness of the context of production of these accounts. Anne Fogarty produces a work in the history of emotions, studying the “weal or woe” (57) in three women's accounts to gain insight into their sense of self. Ireland becomes a place of both security and suffering in these memoirs. Using Marsh's Library provenance data for its holdings, Jason McElligott studies female book reading and ownership through book inscriptions and marginalia. He emphasizes the role of social networks in Elizabeth Stillingfleet's collection, as she received books as gifts from friends and relatives.

Several essays examine the use of rhetorical techniques in women's letters. McAreavey argues that the circumstances of her husband's absence and need to secure the family's lands led Elizabeth Butler, duchess of Ormond, to assert political agency and responsibility as head of the family in her letters. Amanda Herbert then uses a much smaller base of seven letters from Cromwellian settler Eliza Blennerhassett. Fitting into this book's overarching theme of networks, Herbert shows that Eliza used her letters to maintain connections to the Hastings family in England. Although she did this by emphasizing her English identity over her ties to Ireland, Eckerle shows the primacy of the Irish context for the female correspondents of William King, archbishop of Dublin. Using a series of letters in which the addressee, King, and not writer was the common denominator, Eckerle also analyses the rhetorical devices used by these women to petition King.

Three chapters on the Boyle family women further demonstrate the importance of familial and epistolary networks. Walsh uses their letters to claim that Ireland was central to how the Boyle women considered their lives. She emphasizes the importance of the wider family network to these women. Amelia Zurcher then argues that the life writings of Katherine, Lady Ranelagh, and her sister Lady Mary Rich's life writings must be read within the context of this network. She also claims that the Protestant planter ethos of improving Ireland influenced Jones's and Rich's thoughts and helped to legitimize their activities and independence. Ruth Connolly focuses on Jones's negative construction of Ireland in her letters, showing how she rhetorically associated her husband with Ireland and distanced herself from both. This essay reads Jones's letters not only for insight into her marriage, but also her political views on Ireland.

The use of rhetorical techniques, the role of social networks, the agency of women writers, and their constructions of selfhood all emerge as important themes in this book. The essays engage with the significance of Ireland to the women and their writings, although sometimes this link is tenuous. Both books and readers in McElligott's chapter were often from England. By focusing on Anglophone writings, this collection restricts its scope to English settler families, largely neglecting the Old English Irish women. It does not engage with Gaelic women's writing. It also focuses almost wholly on Protestant—mostly Anglican—women, despite the emphasis on the interplay between national and religious identities. Eckerle and McAreavey's choice to eschew a chronological structure and order the chapters by genre makes it difficult to compare change over time across the essays. A wide range of sources are used innovatively as autobiographical texts, although a single book cannot include all lesser studied forms of life writing, such as recipe books, beyond brief mentions. Continuing the recovery work of women's writing, these essays combine archival research with several strands of emerging scholarship. This book is an interesting and valuable contribution to studies on women's writing, life writing, and early modern Ireland.