Bloomsbury triumphs in three-way auction for Howes’ history of medieval women

Bloomsbury Continuum has won a three-way auction for Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women, the trade début by Dr Hetta Howes.

Publisher Tomasz Hoskins acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Matthew Turner at RCW. It will publish as a lead title in hardback in 2024.

“In the Middle Ages few women had the luxury of writing down their thoughts and feelings,” the synopsis reads. “But, remarkably, there are at least four extraordinary women who did. Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife allows us to step into their lives, giving us a fuller history of the Middle Ages, and helping us to understand and appreciate how what they did both echoes modern concerns and paved the way for women writers today.

“Marie de France, a poet. Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchoress. Christine de Pizan, a widow and court writer. Margery Kempe, a no-good wife. Four women, writing hundreds of years ago, before feminism as we know it even existed. Yet in their own ways these four very different writers pushed back against the misogyny of the period. They conjured imaginary worlds where fairy queens challenged gender stereotypes, literally bricked themselves up in cloisters so they could write or put their own experiences down in writing for the first time in the English language.

“Each of them broke new ground in women’s writing and left us incredible insights into the world of medieval life and politics, but they have been largely forgotten by modern readers. This book also draws on the many anonymous women who left us fragments of their lives, building a more complete picture than ever before of a world long since passed.”

Howes is a lecturer in medieval and early modern literature at City, University of London, and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. She regularly contributes to broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and 4, as well as writing for publications such as the Times Literary Supplement and BBC History Extra. She has a BA and MPhil from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from Queen Mary, University of London. Howes has published on the tropes of crying and cleansing in medieval Passion meditation, on blood and shame in medieval lyrics, and on the role of sight in 14th-century alliterative verse. Her academic book Transformative Waters in Late Medieval Literature was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2021. Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife will be her first trade book.

“I’m absolutely delighted that my book, which shines a light on the lives and words of four fascinating medieval women, has found a home with Bloomsbury,” she said. “We tend to make a lot of assumptions about the medieval world, and women’s place within it – that women always got married, that they never worked, that they were always subservient to their husbands, for example. But Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife shows that there were women in the Middle Ages who were leaders and innovators, who changed the world around them, even as they faced challenges surprisingly similar to those that women still have to navigate today.

“I’m so excited to share with readers the writing and lived experience of these inspiring medieval writers, whose voices speak to us across the centuries, and who still have so much to teach us.”

Hoskins said: “From the moment I read this proposal I was captivated by these extraordinary medieval women and Hetta’s clarity of voice, learning and ambition. This is a book that I think will do all the best things history writing can do – re-evaluate the past, write back into it the vivid and colourful lives of women, and transport us into the startlingly modern and imaginative world of the Middle Ages. The whole team at Bloomsbury Continuum is thrilled and very much looking forward to publishing this book beautifully.”