Veiled Women: The Disappearance of Nuns from Anglo-Saxon England

This is the first volume of a two-volume study which launches a new series devoted to studies of Britain from the collapse of the Roman authority at the beginning of the fifth century to the establishment of French-speaking aristocracies in different parts of the island in the 11th and 12th centuries, with contributions by historians, archaeologists, philologists, and literary or cultural scholars. Foot (U. of Sheffield) investigates why there seem to have been fewer religious houses for women for the period 900-1066 than for the years before that. She admits the possibility that contemporary writers deliberately purged any mention of them, but doubts it because the accounts of the earlier pre-viking ones would probably have been expunged as well. The first volume is a narrative of the period as a whole. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)