Margery Kempe, The Boke of Margery Kempe, eds. prin., 1501 and 1940

     When Caxton's former pressman and inheritor of his business, Wynkyn de Worde, published a short prayer from Margery Kempe's longer narrative as an eight-page  pamphlet in 1501, that was the first evidence of the book's existence, but it hardly prepared scholars for the later discovery of the whole manuscript in July 1934.  Its owner, Colonel William E. I. Butler-Bowdon, brought the large manuscript to the Museum of South Kensington to have it identified.  There, the pioneer American feminist and medievalist, Hope Emily Allen, was able to connect the short poem de Worde had published with this much longer narrative to which the poem was appended, almost as a coda or afterward.  Allen co-edited the manuscript with Sanford Meech for its first full publication by the Early English Text Society in 1940.  (For more background on Allen, the discovery of the manuscript, and C20 American and English medieval scholarship, please see John C. Hirsch's Hope Emily Allen: Medieval Scholarship and Feminism, (Norman, Oklahoma: Pilgrim Books, 1988).

ESTC System No.	006176447
ESTC Citation No.	S104749
Author - personal	Kempe, Margery, b. ca. 1373.
Title	Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by her lorde Jhesu cryste, or taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of lyn[n].
Publisher/year	[London] : [Enprynted in Fletestrete by Wynkyn de worde, [1501]]
Physical descr.	[8] p. ; 4⁰.
General note	Caption title.
	Imprint from colophon; publication date from STC.
	Signatures: A⁴.
Citation/references	STC (2nd ed.), 14924
Surrogates	Microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1940. 1 microfilm reel; 35 mm (Early English books, 1475-1640; 81:09).
Loc. of filmed copy	C.
Subject	Contemplation -- Early works to 1800.
Copies - Brit.Isles	Cambridge University Library (includes Sir Geoffrey Keynes Collection, British & Foreign Bible Society, & Peterborough Cathedral)