Summary This volume investigates the origins of one of the most important notions of contemporary society: privacy. Based on case studies from the early modern Low Countries, privacy is tackled from various historical perspectives: social and cultural history, and the history of art and architecture. The Dutch Republic is well known for its financial success, which went hand in hand with the development of a distinguished bourgeois culture and religious toleration. The accumulation of wealth among the urban population led to changes in various spheres, from daily life to art. Privacy, as a concept, started to develop in this period. Indeed, new ideas about housing with the invention of corridors, separate rooms that could be locked, and the separation of the 'common' and the 'private' space, all illustrate the growing importance of privacy in this geographical area. This volume traces perspectives on early modern privacy and private life based on primary sources in several domains: letters, diaries, and poems; genre painting in art; communal life as illustrated by the Jewish community; and finally, the homes of the Dutch elite. The essays in this volume make a key contribution to the emergence of early modern privacy studies as a research field, and to the ongoing discussion of privacy in the Low Countries. Equally, these case studies can serve as models for the analysis of privacy in other European contexts. TABLE OF CONTENTS The Low Countries, Private Life, and Privacy ? MICHA L GREEN and INEKE HUYSMAN 'For My Personal Use': Notions of Privacy in Egodocuments from Early Modern Amsterdam ? MICHA L GREEN Inward Dignity. The Liberated House in Simon Stevin's Architectural Knowledge System as Indication of his Early Modern Conception of 'Privacy' ? HEIDI DE MARE Privacy in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Cabinet Painting ? J RGEN WADUM 'Au couvert, sans estre vues'. Aspects of Privacy in the Residences of Charles de Cro (1560-1612) ? SANNE MAEKELBERG Huygens at Home. Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) on Privacy in his Poem Dagh-werck (The Day's Work)?(1627-1638) ? AD LEERINTVELD Withdrawn and Secretive: Privacy among Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam ? TIRTSAH LEVIE BERNFELD Private Life in Wartime: Captured Letters from 1672 ? JUDITH BROUWER Bibliotheca Furliana, 1714. The Public Sale of a Private Book Collection ? HANNA DE LANGE Sociability and Privacy. Eighteenth-Century Extended Homes of the Amsterdam Elite ? FREEK SCHMIDT Balancing between Mother and Wife: The Private Correspondence of Stadtholder Willem IV of Orange-Nassau (1711-1751) ? FAYROUZ GOMAA and INEKE HUYSMAN Index locorum Index nominum