Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon

By Amy Louise Morgan Marie de France, Fables and Lais. Possibly Oxford (England), 1250s-1270s. The British Library Harley MS 978, on display at the British Library’s Medieval Women: In Their Own Words Exhibition (c) British Library Marie de France is one of the most well-known yet mysterious women writers of the medieval period. Often noted […]

by Karen Rushton The Ordinale and Customary of the Benedictine Nuns of Barking Abbey. University College, Oxford, Ms. 169 [image to be inserted if permissions are obtained] Katherine Sutton, Abbess of Barking between 1358 and 1377, has now been recognised as the earliest named English woman playwright. She made adjustments to the Easter Plays that […]

by Peter Mackie Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (Caedmon’s Hymn) in Oxford, Magdalen College, MS.Lat.105. Credit: The President and Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford. Reproduced with permission. Hild of Whitby, often known by the latinised version of her name, Hilda, was the founding Abbess of Streanaeshalch, now known as Whitby, high on the North Sea cliffs above […]

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 […]