Neglected No Longer

In her first book, Jenna Lay, associate professor of English, has uncovered a trove of forgotten writings by Catholic women living in post-Reformation England and in exile on the European continent.

These women, says Lay, wrote spiritual guides, confessions, prayers, polemics and hagiographies. They wrote to raise money, answer critics and take part in the political and religious debates of the day. But their contributions to English literature have been largely forgotten.

Lay attempts to restore the literary record in Beyond the Cloister: Catholic Englishwomen and Early Modern Literary Culture, published in August by the University of Pennsylvania Press. She spent a decade conducting research for her book, visiting monasteries and libraries in the United States and England and on the European continent, and poring over original manuscripts written in the convents.

She became interested in her subject when she discovered that nuns often appeared in works by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne and other famous writers following the dissolution of England’s Catholic monasteries during the Protestant Reformation.

A more in-depth version of this story was published on the Lehigh News Center.