Two Visionary Women: Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and Company

Harvard FAS

Julian of Norwich (born 1343) and Margery Kempe of Lynn (born 1373) are the two earliest women writers in English whose names we know. They lived thirty years and thirty miles apart, met only once over a period of some days, and wrote long, completely different books, both inspired by what they understood as visionary encounters with the divine. Julian was a Christian intellectual, a brilliant writer, intensely visual but also abstract, who spent a lifetime writing and rewriting an intricate…