Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon

by Ayoush Lazikani Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (the ‘Long Text’), possibly Cambrai (France) around 1675, on display at the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words Exhibition (c) British Library A woman has a vision of something like a hazelnut in the palm of her hand, and contemplates that ‘it is […]

by Sophia D’Ignazio Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Lat. Vindobonensis 751, f. 21r-v (c) Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Leoba (Leofgyth) was one of the most famous students and residents of medieval Wimborne in Dorset. Leoba was celebrated during and after her lifetime as a person of exceptional spiritual and political force, who acted as a valued advisor to […]

by Liz Herbert McAvoy Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91 (the ‘Thornton Manuscript’), fol. 251v. (c) Liz Herbert McAvoy On Saturday, August 10th, 1422, the feast of St Lawrence, an unnamed anchoress enclosed somewhere in the city of Winchester received a vision while asleep in her small cell. This vision, which recurred for three consecutive […]

by June Davey The Boke of St Albans (Westminster, 1496), British Library, C.11.b.5, on display at the Medieval Women: In Their Own Words Exhibition (c) British Library. History is riddled with enigmas and one is the intriguing character of Dame Juliana (de) Berners, to whom the authorship of at least part The Book of Hawking, […]

by Diane Watt Margaret Paston writing to her husband from Gresham requesting weapons and armour (London, British Library, Add MS 34888, f.29) on display at the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words Exhibition (c) British Library Margaret Paston, a fifteenth century Norfolk gentlewoman, was responsible for the largest collection of personal letters from […]

by Amy Morgan and Diane Watt We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded ESRC IAA funding for a new project, Mapping Medieval Women Writers. Only a handful of medieval women writers are reasonably well-known today—primarily Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, both from Norfolk, who are memorialized in their hometowns of King’s […]