Book description
The story of the eventful and controversial life of Margery Kempe -
wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary - is the earliest
surviving autobiography in English. Here Kempe (c. 1373-c. 1440)
recounts in vivid, unembarrassed detail the madness that followed the
birth of the first of her fourteen children, the failure of her brewery
business, her dramatic call to the spiritual life, her visions and
uncontrollable tears, the struggle to convert her husband to a vow of
chastity and her pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land. Margery Kempe
could not read or write, and dictated her remarkable story late in life.
It remains an extraordinary record of human faith and a portrait of a
medieval woman of unforgettable character and courage.
Margery Kempe, born c. 1373, was of a well-to-do middle-class family
from King's Lynn in Norfolk. Married at twenty, she had a vision of
Christ in her madness following her first childbirth, and after early
failures as a businesswoman, felt herself called to the spiritual
life. At about the age of fourty, after she had born fourteen
children, she persuaded her husband to a vow of chastity and began a
pilgrimage across England, Europe and the Holy Land. She was a
controversial figure and was often nearly burnt at the stake as a
heretic. Towards the end of her life she dictated an account of her
travels and visions, which was discovered in 1934. It is the earliest
example of an autobiography in English.
B. A. Windeatt is Fellow and Director of Studies in English at
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Reader in Medieval Literature in the
University of Cambridge.
