Analytical Survey 5: ‘Reading is Good Prayer’: Recent Research on Female Reading Communities

Abstract

Abstract Growth in the history of the book, of reading, and of literacies, to say nothing of work on women, means that the apparently specialized topic dealt with here can barely be contained in a single essay (even one concerned primarily with medieval women readers rather than writers, who are only incidentally relevant here).1 Although some reference will be made to work in other regions of Europe, the primary focus of this essay is limited to reading communities in medieval England, in, principally, anglophone scholarship, and primarily, though not exclusively, around the US–UK axis.