Drawing on the uncompleted edition by E.J. Dobson, with a glossary and additional notes by Richard Dance.

The early thirteenth-century guide for women recluses, Ancrene Wisse, is not only the major surviving workof early Middle English prose, and one which was influential throughout the medieval period; it was an important document in the history of European pastoral literature. This edition is the first to draw upon the evidence of allsurviving manuscripts, using a corrected version of the Corpus text as a `point of entry' to the text's history, as it was revised and adapted by its author and successors for the needs of changing audiences. This first volume contains the text and full critical apparatus; the second volume (forthcoming) will contain the General Introduction, setting the work in its broad cultural and institutional context.

Bella Millett is Reader in English atthe University of Southampton.