Abstract

My discovery of a fifteenth-century book of hours, annotated by members of a sixteenth-century Norfolk aristocratic family, offers evidence of literate devotions at the cusp of the English Reformation. By analyzing the prayers and signatures in the volume, I contribute to a larger scholarly project of using books of hours to recover religious and literary practices in the early modern English vernacular. By locating this analysis in the family history of the volume, I hope to contribute as well to the study of both male and female devotional discourse, the study of book ownership in the early modern period, and the appreciation of early English men and women as imaginative writers with literary, as well as liturgical, aspirations.

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