A fascinating book about four women – each a heroine in her own way – it tells us so much about their world, and about our own… What jumps off the page is the liveliness of the women, their passion, their courage and their own way of being a woman.

Beautifully written and brilliantly observed, Hetta Howes unlocks the secrets of women’s lives, so often silent and inconspicuous in our histories, and shows us the medieval world as we’ve never seen it before. Full of surprises and packed with thrilling details, this is an important, eye-opening book.

A celebration of female ambition and endeavour… enormous fun.

Brilliantly revealing.

Lively and enjoyable… The result is illuminating… evokes the spirit of the period so well.

Howes’s book is highly readable and informative.

[An] immensely readable and academically rigorous book, Hetta Howes has succeeded in assimilating a vast array of material about the circumstances and contributions of women in medieval times, when the material is itself scattered, hidden, piecemeal, and prejudiced. This is a valuable contribution to our understanding.

Hetta Howes unflinchingly explores the trials medieval women faced and, importantly, how they fought back.

Weaving research, political insight and the women’s own words, this is a brilliant portrait of four trailblazers.

This meticulously researched book makes visible so much that popular models of medieval life have found inconvenient or uninteresting to accommodate: female friendship, lesbianism, pregnancy support, and above all the endless negotiations, compromises and sleights-of-hand which women must constantly enact to survive, then as now.

Hetta Howes approaches four pathbreaking women writers much as they approached medieval society’s limitations on them: with narrative agency, innovation, and even a touch of irreverence. Her witty and amusing portrait reveals some astonishing truths: that these medieval women not only existed and held their own–but that their experiences of life, marriage, career, sex, and society are remarkably akin to our own.

With expert knowledge and manifest enthusiasm, Howes uses four very different women as jumping-off points from which to discuss medieval women’s lifespan and experiences, from marriage and love, to work and friendship, to power, achievement, and death. Engaging, authoritative, and original.

A spirited, sparky, and brisk account. With verve and brio, Howes takes the reader into medieval society via some of its most eloquent women, making them approachable and relevant to the world today.

In this engrossing début work, medieval historian Howes explores the lives of four women.

Vivid, deeply researched, and addictively readable, Hetta Howes’ Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife offers a rich, nuanced picture of medieval women’s lives. Drawing on a range of historical archives and literary works, Howes shows us how women thrived in a patriarchal world as writers, visionaries, and entrepreneurs.

Weaving together detail from a huge range of European narratives and documentary sources, Hetta Howes brilliantly illuminates the lives of four medieval women whose experiences prompted writings of different kinds. Her imaginative engagement with these women’s worlds, with their circumstances and predicaments, makes for a spirited commentary on the continuities and fractures in women’s history.

The lives of four groundbreaking women – Marie de France, Julian of Norwich,Christine de Pizan and Margery Kempe – are explored with great verve by Dr Hetta Howes in Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife.

Hetta Howes shines a bright spotlight on four women from the Middle Ages who have been almost forgotten or ignored for far too long.

A spectacular, vivid and ground-breaking work of history that takes us into the minds and lives of medieval women. Superb writing from this author, a very eye catching cover, this book will go far, 5 stars. Blindingly excellent … This book should come with a disclaimer as once you start reading you aren’t going to want to walk away.

I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to read this book. Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife is a medieval journey based on four groundbreaking women. These four women (hence the excellently fit and creative title), with their norm-defying attitudes, bravery, honesty and determination, provide us with incredibly interesting insights about medieval life. Howes’ prose is compelling and captivating. This title is by far the most informative and engaging non-fiction book that I have read on this matter to date. Howes’ approach to these cool women’s writing, life and what medieval life was like for women is a great addition to the literature, and thanks to the smooth blending with a fitting narrative, it is a wonderful addition to ‘literature’ as well.

Immensely readable and jam-packed full of amusing, sometimes salacious and certainly surprising anecdotes about medieval lives. As a debut, Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife is a bold and entertaining leap into the colourful and deeply nuanced world of medieval women.