Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47484 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 688 pages

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.

Customer Reviews

Wow - a rollercoaster from medieval sex to spirituality.
I don't tend to read much women's history but when I saw the rave reviews this book got in the Literary Review and The Independent ('the best history book I've read for years') I decided to give it a go.

I'm glad I did because this book is a gem, crammed with vivid detail from every corner of women's lives over a thousand years of English history - from medieval sex and motherhood to female aristocrats and intellectuals. There's also a really interesting appendix with laws, poems and even a 13th century gynaecological handbook!

If you want to read a good book written by a top scholar in an easy and engaging style, I can't recommend this book enough.

For the General Reader and the Student
Henrietta Leyser's book on Medieval Women is just one work from the blossoming ranks of studies on the subject. Infinitely accessible it covers all the major basic topic areas from the lives of peasant women to urban widows to the aristocracy. Leyser hasn't strayed into the language of entrenched academics making the book a perfect read for the general reader or the undergraduate student.

There are some gaps - there is a notable lack of reference to women as Queens and Queen Mothers. However, there is a bulk of literature available on the subject seperately and the lack is not too dehabilitating.

Overall, an excellent survey overview with some interesting and often poignant examples.

Excellent general history of medieval women
This is a social history (rather than, say, a gender history)of women from the fall of the Roman Empire until the end of the medieval period. Its focus is therefore broader than other general works, most of which ignore women in the period before the year 1300 or thereabouts. Although it must be admitted that more space is devoted to the later Middle Ages, this is perhaps partly due to the greater research done on this time.

The book is very well written and detailed. It is also an easy read, suitable for the general reader as well as students. It also covers an interesting range of themes; the world of work, religious lives and the differing lives of women from different classes, for example. Henrietta Leyser uses a wide range of sources including archeology but is at all times in complete control of her material.