This book is about the ways that ordinary people in town and country creatively define themselves, their families and their social networks. It explores inheritance strategies, personal possessions, attitudes to commemoration after death, the daily fashioning of identity and the interactions between imagination and daily life.
'Salter's strikingly original and intelligent new book explores how individuals in this period sought to articulate a sense of selfhood to themselves and others through a variety of textual and cultural transactions: to literally create themselves...The implications of this book are potentially wide-ranging, though it is likely to be of most value to social and cultural historians'. - Matthew Woodcock, Medium Aevum