Analysis of women's experiences during the Protestant Reformation is an area of burgeoning research and teaching interest. These two works will assist by making available to English-language readers (especially undergraduate audiences) two important German-speaking female protagonists in the Reformations debates. The translation by the late Paul A. MacKenzie of Caritas Pirckheimer's Denkwürdigkeiten (here renamed ‘Journal of the reformation years’) will allow students and scholars to read for themselves an important and oft-cited text by the Poor Clare nun from Nuremburg who resisted the Reformation ideologies and presided over the demise of her convent after it was forbidden by the city council to accept new postulants. The journal compiles reflections, memoirs and correspondence over the crucial years from 1524 to 1528 when the convent was under pressure to open itself to the ideologies and practices of Protestantism. Paul McKenzie's text is significant as the first English translation of this major female-authored work but it is unlikely to satisfy researchers in terms of scholarly apparatus. Footnotes mostly offer interpretation of the register of Pirckheimer's language, rather than theological or historical context. The introduction and interpretation will be of assistance to undergraduate studies – the most appropriate forum for this edition. Paul McKenzie's text, prepared for publication by his wife Christine MacKenzie, will not be the last English translation of Pirckheimer's work but will certainly have been instrumental in bringing wider recognition and study of this critical text.

By comparison, Elsie McKee's translation of writings by the Strasbourg reformer Katharina Zell will appeal to undergraduate and researchers alike. Part of the excellent The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series, it attends to all the scholarly details one would expect, with a careful and informative essay on Zell, her environment and her literary works. This essay summarises much of McKee's earlier and more detailed bio-bibliographical study of Zell and the translations stem from the critical German edition McKee established (Brill 1999). As such, this work brings an important summary of the most recent analysis of Zell's religious participation and literary techniques to a more general audience. Zell's actions and works demonstrate the early possibilities for female intervention in Protestant theory and practice – as a pastor's wife. Through their literary participation, both women found ways to articulate deeply held religious views and to participate in contemporary debates that shaped their lives in direct ways. Ultimately, with the continued translation of works by a wide variety of women involved in Reformation activities, texts such as these will contribute valuable new perspectives that insist on the inclusion of women in Reformation historiography.