Dionys Fitzherbert (c. 1580–c. 1641), daughter of a minor gentry family based in Oxfordshire, was a spiritual writer and autobiographer who left a manuscript (written around 1608–10) which is an unusually early example of spiritual autobiography, along with a number of other papers—correspondence, commentary, meditations, and reflections. Perhaps most strikingly, the autobiographical narrative describes a period of breakdown, in which she suffered from delusions, terror, and despair. Her aim in the account she writes, and in many of the accompanying papers, is to locate this experience in the framework of spiritual affliction, and to refute those who at the time regarded her as melancholy or mad. As such, it is exceptional as a description both of psychic disintegration (however understood) and of the experience of being regarded and treated as mentally disordered, as well as an account of recovery, giving unparalleled insight into her mental worlds.