"Of no consequence"? Rachel Fane's Manuscripts and Archival Erasure

Abstract: This article explores the significance of Rachel Fane/Bourchier's archive as a source of information about seventeenth-century domestic performance. This archive remains underexplored due to Nathaniel Wraxall's interventions in the Sackville archives, which contributed to the neglect of Rachel's archive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Wraxall's interventions serve as a departure point to explore archival absence and loss more broadly: reviewing archival trends in the latter half of the twentieth century, the article thinks through different kinds of absences in archival collections. While archival loss is inevitable, it affects those already marginalized within the archives unduly, in ways that early modern scholars must attend to carefully. Ultimately, this article concludes by considering the ways that Rachel herself contributed to archival erasure within her own records, calling attention to the ongoing duty of care historians owe to subjects who have been written out of dominant historical narratives.