Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead, eds. Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. xi + 270 pp. ISBN 0-8020-3517-5 (cl).

This volume of ten essays collect explores the influences upon "vernacular theology," the spirituality of English laywomen in the late medieval period. The essays discuss three areas of influence: anchoritic spirituality, Carthusian monasticism, and feminine roles in Anglo-Norman and Middle English religious poetry. A final section examines the spiritual practices revealed in The Book of Margery Kempe. Bella Millet argues that the anchoritic experience is rarely studied within the context of the larger medieval cultural milieu. Essays by Rebecca Selman, Anne …