‘I, Me, Myself’: Selfhood and Melancholy in the Journals of Gertrude Savile (1697–1758)

Abstract This article examines the journals of Gertrude Savile from 1727 in light of recent scholarship on early modern and eighteenth‐century melancholy. The concept had myriad associations with medicine, physiology, the imagination, and feeling, but questions remain about how melancholy during this period was considered by those outside the narrow and male‐dominated philosophical, literary, and religious canon — particularly by women experiencing it. Drawing on the history of emotions and literary approaches to selfhood, this article demonstrates how Gertrude Savile navigated and adapted melancholic discourses to shape and consolidate her textual self in relation to her family throughout her everyday life.