English Women’s Spiritual Utopias, 1400-1700

Alexandra Verini is Assistant Professor of English at Ashoka University. She has published articles in leading journals and collections of essays on women’s writing, friendship, and utopia. She leads the digital project earlywomenwriters.com and co-leads the research project Gender in Medieval Women’s Mysticism, which has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“Verini has produced a book that is a highly pleasurable, as well as a highly informative read. In the breadth of its approach and its subject matter, English Women’s Spiritual Utopias is a truly interdisciplinary book, one that will appeal to scholars encountering medieval and early modern utopia for the first time, as well as established researchers in the field.” (Chloë Houston, Early Modern Women Journal, Vol. 19 (02), 2025)

• Chapter 1: Mirrors of our Lady: Utopia in the Medieval Convent.- Chapter 2: These Most Afflicted Sisters: Old and New Futures in Exiled English Convents.- Chapter 3: Not Yet: Aspirational Women’s Communities Beyond the Convent.- Chapter 4: Convents of Pleasure: English Women’s Literary Utopias.