The Book of Margery Kempe

“The only consistent thing about Margery Kempe and her Book is that they both seem fated to be made and remade, over and over, during her lifetime and afterwards. She has been a lay saint and a heretic, a dysphoric woman gendered as both mother and virgin, a mad woman and a brilliant maker, a person of privilege and a social outcast, a friend and a loner, a speaker of queer nonsense and mystical truth. This revised edition of the Book of Margery Kempe offers readers an opportunity to meet ‘the Creature’ (as she called herself) again in a renewed form. However we first find her, Margery Kempe and her Book challenges us to come back and see it all, again, in a new way.”

—M. W. BYCHOWSKI, Case Western Reserve University

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

• Lynn Staley’s superb translation, preserving the voices and cadences of the original text and retaining much of the Middle English language.
• A “Kempe lexicon,” defining the author’s idiosyncratic words and spelling, and additional explanatory annotations.
• Two new images of St. Nicholas’ chapel in King’s Lynn and a map of medieval England accompanying Staley’s revised introduction.
• Primary sources that contextualize the religious authorities and divine figures who inform Margery’s character and spiritual journey.
• Eleven critical essays—four new to the Second Edition—offering diverse perspectives on authorship, cross-culturalism, and moralism, among other topics.
• A selected bibliography.