ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about Mary Joseph Howard and Winifred of St Teresa Lingen, the lay sister who worked with Mary Joseph in developing the English Carmelite's historicizing mission at Antwerp. Their influence on the convent's life-writing was paramount, yet they remained to all intents anonymous, although editorial interventions over several centuries have added to their camouflage. The material they compiled defines much of the Carmel's early history, from its foundation in 1619 to around 1750- that is, through most of the community's period of exile. Carmelite historians have relied in many ways comfortably on the work of Henry James Coleridge, who converted to Catholicism in 1852. In 1865, he was appointed the first Jesuit editor of The Month which incorporated the Catholic Review in 1874, and from 1881 he compiled the Catholic Quarterly Series. Coleridge's Life of Mother Margaret of Jesus similarly adds intermediary levels to original Carmelite sources that were 'contemporaneous with its subject'.
