The collection is organized around two main principles, stages of life and gender, and is divided into eight chapters: childhood, youth and sexuality, courtship and weddings, married life, economic life, networks and communities, and widowhood and old age. The sources address the numerous and varied ways in which women and men’s notions of themselves affected their lives, and explore how accepted norms of  masculine and feminine behaviour influenced social, economic, and religious change.  Guided by a general editors' introduction and then an introduction to each chapter, the user will find this an invaluable reference companion to early modern gender history.