Beyond Romance? Re‐Reading the ‘Lives’ of Anne, Lady Halkett (1621/2?–1699)

Abstract

Abstract While for many Anne, Lady Halkett will be an unfamiliar figure, if and when she is discussed it is usually in the context of her (potentially scandalous) relationship with Colonel Joseph Bampfield. Here I argue that this image is based on a disproportionate critical focus on Halkett's ‘Autobiography’ or ‘Memoirs’, which has distorted our perception of Halkett's life and writing. By tracing how the focus on ‘romance’ emerged in the earliest responses to Halkett, I examine why this persists in more recent criticism. Only Ezell, Lamb, Wiseman and I have so far paid any attention to the other twenty‐one manuscript volumes which Halkett produced over the course of her life. This leads me to conclude that ‘in contrast to the current tendency to focus on Halkett's “life” as articulated in the singular (and with reference to a single text), it is vital that we pay more attention to the plurality of Halkett's “lives”’, which suggest ‘that while modern critics have been obsessed with romance, Halkett herself was far more preoccupied with royalism and religion’.

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