Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon

Medieval Women: In Their Own Words at the British Library is unmissable

Diane Watt, University of Surrey The British Library’s breathtaking new exhibition, Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, brings to life the experiences, stories and voices of women from the distant past. The show covers the period from 1100 to 1500, and a range of mainly western countries and cultures. Many of the women featured are […]

New Insights into Margaret Paston’s Life: God’s Own Gentlewoman

by Karen Smyth, Paston Footprints (C) HSR Photography. The author of a new book on the remarkable story of Margaret Paston whose letters form the most extensive collection of personal writings by a medieval English woman, was given a warm reception in Mautby, where Margaret Paston came from. Over a hundred of Margaret’s letters survive […]

Daughters of Light: Journeys with India’s Women Mystics

by Namrata Chaturvedi Transcription from an 18th century manuscript of Sahajobai’s verse. Accessed from Rajasthani Shodh Sansthan, Jodhpur. Reproduced with permission. Dear sister, come let us celebrate with songs of rejoice, The eternal one has descended in human form of his choice. –Sahajobai, 18th c. north India Sahajobai thus sings of her guru’s (master’s) birth. Known […]

‘A lodging most meetest . . . chosen for a poor widow . . . in my old days’: Glimpsing Women’s Devotional Literary Culture in Bristol through its Late-Medieval Manuscripts

By Liz Herbert McAvoy Corbel depicting the head of a woman outside St Mark’s Chapel, Bristol (c) Liz Herbert McAvoy The protracted meeting in Norwich between the aspiring urban vowess, Margery Kempe, and the anchoress, Julian of Norwich, in the latter’s cell at St Julian’s church, has been much discussed, not least in other contributions […]

Novelizing the Lives of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe

by Victoria MacKenzie Image: Hardback cover of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain My debut novel, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, explores the lives of two medieval women, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. It was published in 2023 by Bloomsbury and won the First Book […]

Two Women in Conversation: Margery Kempe’s daughter-in-law and her possible influence on the writing of the Book.

by Santha Bhattacharji The Book of Margery Kempe, Chapter 18, British Library, Add. MS 61823. Credit: The British Library. This post[i] explores a possible ‘starting point’ for the writing of The Book of Margery Kempe (written c. 1438)[ii], sometimes described as the first autobiography in English. The Book records Margery Kempe’s mystical experiences, embedded in […]

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