Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. List of Illustrations ix
4. Acknowledgements x
5. List of Contributors xi
6. Abbreviations xiv
7. Introduction: ‘No Such Thing as Society?’ Solitude in Community Cate Gunn and Liz Herbert McAvoy 1
8. 1. ‘O Sely Ankir!’ 13
9. Part I. Religious Communities
10. 2. The Anchoress of Colne Priory: A Solitary in Community 37
11. 3. Anchorites in their Heavenly Communities 53
12. 4. Rule Within Rule, Cell Within Cloister: Grimlaicus’s Regula Solitariorum 68
13. Part II. Lay Communities
14. 5. English Nuns as ‘Anchoritic Intercessors’ for Souls in Purgatory: The Employment of A Revelation of Purgatory by Late Medieval English Nunneries for Their Lay Communities 85
15. 6. ‘In aniversaries of ower leoveste freond seggeth alle nihene’: Anchorites, Chantries and Purgatorial Patronage in Medieval England 101
16. 7. ‘Item receyvyd of ye Anker’: The Relationships between a Parish and its Anchorites as Seen through the Churchwardens’ Accounts 117
17. 8. The Curious Incident of the Hermit in Fisherton 131
18. 9. Was Julian’s Nightmare a Māre? Julian of Norwich and the Vernacular Community of Storytellers 147
19. Part III. Textual Communities
20. 10. Anchoritic Textual Communities and the Wooing Group Prayers 167
21. 11. The Anchoress Transformed: On wel swuðe god ureisun of God almihti and þe wohunge of ure lauerd in the Fourteenth-Century A Talkyng of the Love of God 183
22. 12. Ancrene Wisse and the Egerton Hours 199
23. Bibliography 221
24. Index 244