Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England (review)

Erler's latest volume brings together her research on women and their books, some of it previously published, in one useful volume. Because of the firsthand nature of the archival research involved, the discoveries made by manuscript and printed-book historians tend to be published originally in essay form, often representing weeks, months, and years spent in rare book rooms studying the primary sources. Erler may be the Jane Austen of the history of the book. Her palette is small and elegant and her brush strokes delicate, but much is to be learned from the primary sources that she discusses.

The first chapter considers the ownership and transmission of books in women's religious communities. It is mainly a synthesis of materials from other commentators well-known to students of book history, including Doyle, Ker, Bell, and Hamel.¹ The final section, however, traces the movement of specific copies of printed editions, though some of this material has been culled from secondary sources. Chapter two builds on Erler's previous discussion of Margery de Nerford, a London vowess, in Medieval London Widows 1300-1500, reconstructing Nerford's library and intellectual circle in great detail through excellent detective work.² The next chapter considers the will of Margaret Purdans, a Norwich widow, who left "four English books to women or to women's monasteries" (68), and that of Katherine Kerre, her friend, who also "owned, lent, and bequeathed books" (69). The Fettyplace sisters and their connections with Syon Abbey, the subject of chapter four, Erler previously discussed in Privileging Gender in Early Modern England.³ Chapter five considers the books owned and circles inhabited by Katherine Manne, anchoress of Norwich, and Elizabeth Throckmorton, the abbess of a Cambridgeshire house of Poor Clares. Chapter six presents the case for women's reading of religious incunabula, or books printed prior to 1501. Appendix I is particularly useful, presenting a list of surviving religious women's books that are not noted elsewhere.

Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550 (New York, 2002), takes a broader, magisterial view of noblewomen (and gentry) during the same period, drawing on thousands of letters and wills and using information compiled about 1,200 aristocratic couples and their children. But Erler's is the volume to consult for a very specific study of women's pious reading, both secular and religious, and their ownership of books.