The Book of the Maidservant (24 page)

i
used many sources while writing this novel. Primary among them was Barry Windeatt’s translation,
The Book of Margery Kempe
(New York: Penguin, 1985), from which the quotations in the author’s note are taken, and Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen’s Middle English edition,
The Book of Margery Kempe
(London: Oxford University Press, 1940). Three books about Margery that I found helpful were Clarissa Atkinson’s
Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), Margaret Gallyon’s
Margery Kempe of Lynn and Medieval England
(Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1995), and Anthony Goodman’s
Margery Kempe and Her World
(London: Pearson/Longman, 2002). Among other very useful books were Barbara Hanawalt’s
Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), Norbert Ohler’s
The Medieval Traveller
(trans. Caroline Hillier; Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 1989), and Jonathan Sumption’s
Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion
(London: Faber and Faber, 1975). John Mouse and Thomas say some things that I took
from Helen Waddell’s
The Wandering Scholars
(New York: Doubleday, 1955), and valuable information about medieval households came from
The Household Book of Dame Alice de Bryene 1412–1413
, edited by V. B. Redstone (Ipswich: W. E. Harrison, 1931) and Elaine Power’s translation of
The Goodman of Paris
(New York: George Routledge and Sons, 1928). A Web site designed by Sarah Stanbury and Virginia Raguin, “Mapping Margery Kempe,” includes photographs of the town of King’s Lynn and some of its buildings, as well as other information about Margery’s life and times:
www.holycross.edu/departments/visarts/projects/kempe

w
hen I think of all the people who contributed in some way to this book, I am humbled. To name each of them would take pages, so here I will thank only a few: Nancy and Bill Barnhouse, Sid Brown, and Allison Wallace for their support and encouragement; Megan Isaac and Lisa Carl for their helpful comments; Robbie Mayes for urging me to keep trying; Diane Landolf for saying yes; and Ena Jones, for being the best critique partner I could ever have imagined. My gratitude to you all.

This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2009 by Rebecca Barnhouse
Map copyright © 2009 by Grady McFerrin

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barnhouse, Rebecca.
The book of the maidservant / by Rebecca Barnhouse. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In 1413, a young maidservant accompanies her deeply religious mistress, Dame Margery Kempe, on a religious pilgrimage to Rome. Includes author’s note on Kempe, writer of “The Book of Margery Kempe,” considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89291-2
1. Kempe, Margery, b. ca. 1373—Juvenile fiction. [1. Kempe, Margery, b. ca. 1373—Fiction. 2. Religious life—Fiction. 3. Pilgrims and pilgrimages—Fiction. 4. Voyages and travels—Fiction. 5. Middle Ages—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B2668Bo 2009   [Fic]—dc22   2008028820

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