SOURCE: Introduction to The Book of Margery Kempe, translated by John Skinner, Image Books, 1998, pp. 1-11.

In the following essay, Skinner offers a brief manuscript history of The Book of Margery Kempe and comments on Kempe's illiteracy, as well as the work's structure and historical context.

News of the discovery of The Book of Margery Kempe was broken in a letter to The Times of London on December 27, 1934, by the distinguished American medievalist Hope Emily Allen. “Previously,” she wrote, “scholars had been forced to conclude that medieval old ladies did not write their reminiscences.” Yet now the first known autobiography in the English language had come to light, having lain hidden for four hundred years in the library of an Old Catholic family, the Butler-Bowdons. And, moreover, this unique document was written by a woman.

Hope Allen herself had been visiting London when the manuscript was first brought...