Henrietta Leyser considers the problems and attitudes fundamental to every woman of the time: medieval views on sex, marriage and motherhood; the world of work and the experience of widowhood for peasant, townswoman and aristocrat. The intellectual and spiritual worlds of medieval women are also explored. MEDIEVAL WOMEN celebrates the diversity and vitality of English women's lives in the Middle Ages.

About the Author

Henrietta Leyser is a lecturer in medieval history at St Peter's College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. She studied history at Oxford University both as an undergraduate and as a graduate, and she has taught and lectured at universities in Great Britain and the USA.

Prizes

A magisterial examination of recent historical discussion on every corner of women's lives from the Dark Ages to the Reformation' Bill Saunders, Literary Review Fascinating account by eminent expert in medieval history Medieval Women is the best history book I've read for years, full of stories and surprises and written with gentle elegance from enormous knowledge' Sue Gaisford, Independent