Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100

This book focuses on the period before the so-called 'Barking Renaissance' of women's writing in the 12th century. By examining the surviving evidence of women's authorship, as well as the evidence of women's engagement with literary culture more widely, Watt argues that early women's writing was often lost, suppressed, or deliberately destroyed. Watt examines women's literary engagement in monasteries such as Ely, Whitby, Barking and Wilton Abbey, as well as letters and hagiographies from the 8th and 9th centuries. She provides a look at women's writing in the early medieval period to understand women's literary history more broadly.