Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. by Anne Winston-Allen. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. Pp. xvii + 345 + 7 ill. + 1 map. $55.

In the preface to her book, Anne Winston-Allen notes that Convent Chronicles is the first study "to survey nuns' convent chronicles and historical writings collectively across orders and regions in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries" (p. xiii). The objects of her study are the chronicles and accounts written by female reform activists; through them the author seeks to explore "the distinctive nature of women's religious and literary activities at a key moment in both the history of Western Christianity and the ongoing construction of a history for women" (p. 6).

Marianne Kalinke
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign