Saints Edith and Aethelthryth ─ Princesses, Miracle Workers, and Their Late Medieval Audience: the Wilton Chronicle and the Wilton Life of St. Aethelthryth

For the latest in Brepols' series of medieval texts by and about women, Dockray-Miller (English, Lesley University) has edited and translated two Middle English saint's lives composed at Wilton Abbey around the year 1420. The women commemorated are the Anglo-Saxon princesses, Edith and Athelthryth, both of whom fled the court to enter monastic life. Dockray-Miller's introduction puts the lives in the double perspective of the pre-conquest time in which the women lived and the fifteenth century, the time in which they were written, when England was reaching back to its pre-Norman Conquest roots to create a national identity. In the translations she has wisely refrained from over-editing, letting the redundancies and oddities of speech remain, thus giving the modern reader more of a sense of the original. A glossary is provided along with a critical bibliography. Distributed in North America by the David Brown Book Co. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)