The Romantic period occupies a central position in the history of life writing as the form developed in response to changes in print culture and a fascination with the lives of others. Despite life writing’s hazardous association with egotism and publicity, and the initial marginalization of women writers in studies of the form, female authorship in both print and manuscript is now recognized as crucial to Romantic life writing. The flexibility of the term “life writing” has been invaluable for moving beyond a restrictive canon of Romantic autobiography to encompass a more diverse and hybrid range of texts, often written by women or taking women’s lives as their subjects, including biographies, memoirs, diaries, journals, letters, and collective biographies. Romantic women writers experimented with spiritual autobiography and scandalous memoir, crossed generic borders in texts that combined writing the self with fictional modes or travel, while also showing the potential of life writing to shape historical narratives and literary legacies.