Mildmay, Grace

Grace Mildmay (née Sherington) (1552–1620) was a writer of autobiography, devotional meditations, and medical notes, the first two for the use of her family, the latter including both a record of her medical practice and correspondence with prominent physicians. Her memoir, a manuscript of eighty-five pages that prefaces her collection of devotions, is one of the first extended pieces of autobiography in English. As a writer of devotions, Mildmay filled a manuscript of some nine hundred pages, of great interest for demonstrating the way in which scripture and devotional reading could serve as a springboard for self-understanding and for confident ideas about the world. Her surviving medical papers, a final 250 folios, are unusual for the knowledge they exhibit of medical theory and for the inclusion of careful case notes.