Elizabeth Spearing – författare

This is a wide-ranging collection of writings by and about religious women presenting some of the most original and compelling literature of the middle ages. Highlights of this edition include Marguerite Porete's allegorical poem "The Mirror of Simple Souls", a dialogue between Love and Soul that was condemned as heretical; an account by a male ecclesiastic of Christine the Astonishing, who was resurrected at her own funeral; and, the revelations received by Bridget of Sweden, the first woman to found a religious order.

Biographies of two 17th-century female criminals, both celebrated in their day. These are the first editions published since the 17th century.

Accused of transvestism and trickery, indicted for bigamy and hanged for robbery, Mary Carleton, the German Princess, was the most notorious female rogue of her time. Mary Frith, alias Mal Cutpurse, was a similarly spectacular transgressor: a resident of London's infamous Alsatia district, a criminal sanctuary between Fleet Street and the Thames, she was renowned for strolling the streets of seventeenth-century London in men's clothes.The Case of Mary Carleton and The Life and Death of Mary Frith, are reprinted here for the first time, since their original publication in 1663 and 1662 respectively. In the tradition of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, these are the semi-fictional biographies of these two extraordinary criminals. They reveal to us a world in which women smoked in taverns, drank to excess in alehouses, and regaled revelers with anecdotes around a fire—all perilous activities for a woman in a society which considered modesty, silence, and obedience the feminine virtues of the day.