Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe of Lynn Norfolk took pains in the decades of her prime to have her life as mother, wife, and pilgrim recorded for posterity. With erudition and sympathy, Bale frames Margery-a doubting, aching, troubled, and fiercely independent woman-within the European cities that staged her life, and so makes her more familiar than any fifteenth-century woman has ever been. -- Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, Queen Mary University of London, author of Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life is an evocative, vivid, and learned study of a complicated and intriguing text, The Book of Margery Kempe. Bale's captivating study blends rigorously researched biography with incisive analysis of the text. The book combines academic prowess with an almost poetic representation of people, events, and places, and brings to the fore the trials and triumphs of Kempe's negotiation of her mixed life. -- Laura Kalas, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature, Swansea University, author of Margery Kempe's Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-course