"Lady Mary Carey examined her life and expressed her views in a handwritten manuscript, composed and revised between 1650 and 1658. Her poetry and prose was important enough to her inner circle that her autograph manuscript was copied in a fair hand in 1681. In addition to providing us with key insights into women's multidimensional roles as wives, widows, and mothers during the seventeenth century in England, Carey's writings teach us a great deal about a woman's deepest emotional and spiritual states while confronting the hardships of life"--