ABSTRACT
Fortunate is the editor who can revise and update her work! Nearly two decades have passed since this anthology first appeared and in that time women’s writing in the Middle Ages has attracted much scholarly interest (see the useful ‘Suggestions for Further Reading’ in Watt 2007 for an indication of recent work in the field). One immediate consequence is the radical change in the choice of extracts from Middle English Trotula texts, necessitated by editorial work on the sources of The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing undertaken subsequent to the first edition. But my earlier hope that further archival and manuscript research would uncover more previously unknown women writers like Dame Eleanor Hull remains unfulfilled – although we should bear in mind that no new named male writers have emerged, either.
