JULIAN OF NORWICH (1342–1416?), known as Lady Julian, Dame Julian, and Mother Julian, was an English mystic and Christian theologian. Julian lived in the century in which Europe was ravaged by the Black Death, and England and France were torn by the Hundred Years War. Against a background of war, plague, social turmoil, and religious unrest she shared in a flowering of English mysticism along with Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, Margery Kempe, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing.

Highly literate—despite a polite disclaimer in her book Revelations [or Showings] of Divine Love—and demonstrating a knowledge of the Vulgate rare for a layperson of her day, she was the first woman to compose a literary work in English. Although scholars have traced many general theological influences in Julian's book, specific influences are hard to identify, so thoroughly assimilated are they into...