Late Medieval Female Authors

In fourteenth and fifteenth-century Europe, women rarely wrote books. Of the small number of works they did produce, even fewer remain today. These surviving volumes offer us a rare glimpse into the struggle of a small number of women who acted with determination to begin filling the void of female authorship in European literature.

Although the Church encouraged women to submerge themselves in spiritual disciplines, and while a few upper-class and monastic women received some education, they were not encouraged to write literature. Society consented to females writing in the vernacular when women confined their work to personal correspondence or household administration, but when they wanted to publish, the confining socio-religious controls of the late medieval Church and academic tradition created a nearly impenetrable barrier between their dream and reality. Those who broke through these barriers usually did so at great personal cost. This website will soon offer a more detailed study of several of these women by name.

- Ann Scott -