Of the far-reaching recommendations that the Council of Trent (1545–63) made regarding routines of daily life in Catholic religious orders, those relating to female religious have often been characterised as the most restrictive. Trent had famously placed a renewed emphasis on the worth of monastic enclosure for nuns, as the author of this study suggests, promoting ‘a diminution in contact between nuns themselves, and between nuns and the outside world’ (p. 40). Trent had allegedly led to nuns in the early modern period becoming metaphorically dead to the world, turning their backs on family, friends and all things worldly that lay beyond the convent wall. The reality, however, was quite the opposite, with convent life affording nuns opportunities for self-expression and self-fashioning in ways that were not open to ‘women of the world’. Van Hyning's study forms part of a burgeoning corpus of scholarship which has addressed this misrepresentation.

This work claims to be ‘the first book-length study devoted to the topic of English nuns’ autobiography’, exploring ‘the paradoxes surrounding the production of convent autobiography, including the limiting conditions of convent reading and writing, contrasted with the unusual freedoms of women to govern many aspects of their daily lives, to invest and dispose of property, to run schools, and much else’ (p. 1). The fruits of a PhD thesis, and a subsequent British Academy fellowship, this most-welcome study focuses on two English convents in exile, both belonging to the Augustinian order: Nazareth convent, Bruges, and St Monica's, Louvain. These convents were part of a much wider network of English Catholic religious houses on the continent, for both females and males, that had developed in the wake of the successes of the Protestant Reformation in England.

Van Hyning's study is broken down into five chapters, which examine letters, conversion narratives, prayers, governance documents and chronicles. Within these chapters the author skilfully teases out the development of two new subgenres, which she labels ‘anonymous autobiography’ and ‘subsumed autobiography’. Until now, readers are told, many of these autobiographical dimensions of convent chronicles, accounts and governance literature of both convents, have rarely been examined. Considering this, her work offers most welcome insights into the dynamics and purposes of writing within convents.

Chapter i, ‘A pattern how to dye’, examines the letters of Winefred (Mary) Thimbelby (1618–90), a choir nun at Louvain. In it the author questions the ‘dead to the world’ myth, discussing Thimbelby's prolific writings with her family over a period of three decades. Whilst professing her own corporal death, the writer paradoxically engages in the very worldly practice of letter-writing, imploring her family to adopt lives that would lead them all to a celestial reunion. This is yet another example of how exiled British religious interacted with outsiders, and in turn how they attempted to exert an extra-mural, transnational influence. Similarly, chapter ii recounts a call to a moral and spiritual conversion, albeit through a different medium. Here Van Hyning examines a conversion narrative, written by a member of the Nazareth convent, Mechtildis (Catharine) Holland (1637–1720), entitled ‘How I came to change my religion’, the full text of which is helpfully included as an appendix.

Chapters iii and iv explore the practice of chronicle-writing. Chronicles were important for the formation of communal identities in early modern convents. The examples selected by the author show the nuances of their writing between different communities. Chapter iii, which deals with the work of the first anonymous chronicler of St Monica's, Mary Copley (1591/2–1669), illustrates how the writer's concerns were not only limited to events within her community. Copley's narrative was a communal history of English Catholics’ recusancy and exile, interweaving her own convent's story with the recounting of events in their ‘adopted’ land, such as the siege of Louvain in 1635. The other example, from Nazareth convent, illustrates a writer whose concerns were much more narrowly focused on life within the convent. This first chronicle from Nazareth, the author suggests, was probably the work of Grace Constable (d. 1673). Constable's writings were shaped heavily by a continual referring to accounts, giving them a unique, particular flavour, which was in stark contrast to the later chronicles of Nazareth (for the full texts see The chronicles of Nazareth [The English convent], Bruges 1629–1793, ed. Caroline Bowden, Woodbridge 2017).

Much of the final chapter, entitled ‘The prioresses’ tales’, examines the writings of Teresa Joseph (Lucy) Herbert (1669–1744), the most prolific of all the writers mentioned in this book, and ‘one of the best-known nuns in the exile period’ (p. 217). Herbert left behind a significant literary legacy, including governance documents, printed works, letters, as well as a portion of the Nazareth chronicles. Her published works gained a popularity that extended far beyond her own lifetime; Van Hyning discusses the motivations of the London-based Catholic printer, James Peter Coghlan (1731–1800), for printing Herbert's works well over a century after her death.

This book should be welcomed by those whose own interests lie beyond the spheres of Catholic history and women's writing. The book was undoubtedly framed with a broad readership in mind. Indeed, the author at all times assists in making it as accessible as possible to those unfamiliar with the topic; for example, providing a helpful glossary of religious terms. That the book itself is limited in scope, focusing on the archives of two convents, does not in any way detract from its merits. We are told that Nazareth and St Monica's were chosen because of their respective collections’ richness. This work has unquestionably shown this to be true, and there are many other such British convents whose archives will no doubt allow for further comment on this most interesting and under-explored subject. As the author herself acknowledges, these ‘documents are significant sources for our understanding of women's self-writing in the early modern period’ (p. 260.).