Ancrene Wisse / Guide for Anchoresses

Bella Millett is a Professor of English at the University of Southampton. The main focus of her research has been on a group of West Midlands prose works, and she has edited Hali Meithhad (1982), co-edited Medieval English Prose for Women: Selections from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse (1990) with Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and has jointly produced an annotated bibliography, Ancrene Wisse, The Katherine Group, and the Wooing Group (1996).

It is a text that all students of English Literature should read but which few could in its original language, making a good modern translation an essential to the work’s modern dissemination. Bella Millett’s new translation is extremely valuable for this reason alone, but it is an additional boon in being the fruit of many years’ research on the original Middle English manuscripts by the current leading scholar in the field of Ancrene Wisse studies. Such helpful tools, coupled with the very readable lucid prose in which the entire translation and commentary have been rendered will no doubt be greeted with thanks from the students and non-specialists whom this translation is meant to serve, as well as from the specialists who now have an exceptionally well done translation to use in their classrooms.

• Preface to this editionIntroduction1. Ancrene Wisse and its Contexts2. Sources and Analogues3. The Form of the Work4. The Textual History of Ancrene Wisse5. This TranslationGuide for AnchoressesPrefacePart 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6Part 7Part 8Explanatory NotesBibliography1. A Note on Further Reading2. Abbreviations and Short Titles3. Editions and Secondary WorksGeneral IndexScriptural Quotations Index