Mary Ward, founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (now known as the Congregation of Jesus), has been the subject of increased scholarly inquiry since the Vatican Archives made its information on Ward available to researchers in the late 1990s, when it opened the records of the inquisition. In this latest addition to the growing body of biographical and primary source material available on Ward, Christina Kenworthy-Browne provides scholars of English Catholicism, Reformation-era Catholicism, early modern women and monasticism with full, edited versions of the English vita, the autobiographical fragments and a selection of letters, with critical commentary. Many of these sources previously have been available only in manuscript or in languages other than English. Kenworthy-Browne supplements the texts with selections from The Painted Life, a visual biography of Ward's journey of faith commissioned in the decades after Ward's death. She prefaces the collection with a brief, objective biography and suggestions on how to contextualise Ward within the English Reformation, post-Tridentine Europe and the innovative new forms of religious community that developed in this era. Kenworthy-Browne supplies enough background and editorial commentary to make the documents accessible to the general reader interested in Ward or English Catholicism. For scholars interested in more in-depth research, this collection is an excellent starting point, serving as a complement to the recent works of Immolata Wetter, who focused primarily upon Ward's encounter with the inquisition, and Ursula Dirmeier, whose German translations of the complete Mary Ward archive helped to inspire this work.