Despite the strange and distant nature of her life and subject-matter, the works of Julian of Norwich remain immediate and compelling. Her Revelations are recorded in two versions: the short text, or first edition , written near the time; and the better-known second version, which is both longer and more complex, completed some twenty years later. The short text, offering personal details edited out in her second edition , but which allow a bettersense of Julian as a person, is presented here in translation. It includes also those chapters from the long text that describe Julian’s doctrine of the Motherhood of God. The volume also contains an introduction, placing Julianin the larger context of the fourteenth-century English mystical tradition, and an Interpretative Essay.

FRANCES BEER is Professor of English at York University, Toronto.