Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Marie de France, Julian of Norwich, Christine de Pazanne and Marjorie Kemp.

What can the lives of these four extraordinary female writers reveal about the everyday

lives of ordinary women in the Middle Ages? Well, rather a lot, according to Heta Howes in her new

book, Poet, Mystic, Widow Wife. Reading closely into these author's works, Heta captures glimpses

into medieval lives that have otherwise been overshadowed. Emily Briffitt spoke to her to find out more.

Hi Heta, thank you so much for joining me on the History Actual Podcast. Your book, Poets, Mystic,

widow wife, introduced us to four extraordinary female writers of the Middle Ages.

Would you mind introducing us to them?

Of course, I would love to.

I've spent a lot of time with these four women.

So our first and earliest woman is Marie de France, and she is the woman we know the least about before I chose to centre the book on.

She was an incredible writer, translator. We think she was probably a noble woman, although we don't

know for sure, and we know that she was from France, but certainly spent some time in England.

So that's Marie. I like to think of her as enigmatic Marie because her life is so elusive

to us. Then there is Julian of Norwich and the other three women after Maria kind of all similar

time period. So Maria's act of writing 1160 to 1215. Julian is probably born somewhere around 1343,

although we don't know exactly when.

Also probably at least a gentle woman,

if not a noble woman,

and became what we call an anchoress.

And I can talk more about that later,

...