In Learning to Die in London, 1380–1540, Amy Appleford offers a fresh understanding of the culture of dying in late medieval and early Reformation London. Using a wide range of literature, including inspirational and penitential texts, inspirational guides, literary writing, and wills, Appleford provides insights into the preoccupation of Londoners with death following the visitations of the plague and political violence in late fourteenth century. She traces the changing patterns of preparation for dying, from the household and community to increasingly internalized responses. In doing so, she shows how attitudes toward death shaped civic government and public works, laicization of religious experience, and the cult of memory, and contributed not just to the art of dying but also to the experience of good living. The book is important for those interested in the literate culture of London and England and in the more widespread borrowing of texts from northern Europe and earlier Latin writers.

As Appleford discusses in chapter 1, spiritual governance in the post-plague generation centered on the lay household. Appleford notes the influence of Thomas Wimbledon's 1388 sermon that depicted Christ as a “housholdynge man” and urged the estates, particularly lay leaders and clergy, to perform their duties. The sermon in English was bound into household miscellanies along with similar devotional pieces such at the Visitation of the Sick. The layperson's responsibility was for the welfare of the sick, whereas the priest attended to the last rites of the dying. The emphasis was on Christ, lay enablement in spiritual matters, and the duty of householders and lay leaders to attend to the community. To a certain extent, there were hints of Wycliffite leanings in these texts.

In chapter 2, Appleford delineates the particular experience of the next generation, that of the early fifteenth century, when London was enjoying the height of its independent government, as represented by Richard Whittington and John Carpenter. Whittington, who had become a very wealthy mercer and had served as London's mayor, was also noted for his philanthropy—his generosity to the poor of London. Could this rich man get into heaven? His deathbed scene is depicted on the frontispiece of the rules for his almshouse: his executors, a priest, a physician analyzing his urine, and a crowd of bedesmen surround him. The house was a secular rather than religious institution, and although a priest served as director and the inhabitants were to attend services and pray for the benefactor, the bedesmen had considerable control over their community. Carpenter, Whittington's executor and, for many years, common clerk of London years, likewise established charities of his own, including a school. But most notably he commissioned a depiction of the dance of death for the churchyard at St. Paul's. The picture, based on Lydgate's translation from the French text, shows the various estates all taken by death. These acts of charity by two rich men and others like them addressed the prevalent concern that money made in commerce was tainted with usury. The distribution of wealth to the poor and to the betterment of the community was a pious act that offered salvation to dying benefactors.

Founding a secular almshouse and commissioning a mural depicting the dance of death illustrate the trend to laicization of religion, but increasingly another approach appeared in the fifteenth century: an internalization of salvation through spiritual exercises. Two major institutions in London, the Carthusian house at Charterhouse and St. Bartholomew's hospital, attracted wealthy and pious lay people who sought to mitigate the corruption of their material success by turning to inward contemplation to overcome sin. Several texts found in the collections of wealthy London families, Pety Job (a reflection on the Job story) and the Twelve Profits of Tribulation, provided meditations on suffering and death. Rather than encouraging community-focused acts as a means of salvation, these centered on individual redemption. Appleford argues, for example, that Thomas Hoccleve, recovering from illness and loss of position in literary circles, wrote Lerne to Die, laying out a personal preparation for death in an ars moriendi.

Middle English texts of the last decades of the fifteenth century indicate that London readers were experiencing the trends that were already prevalent on the continent, particularly among Germanic speakers, but also reflected in in Jean Gerson's pastoral treatise Opusculum tripartitum. An anonymous work, The Book of the Craft of Dying (fifteenth century), recommended a search for spiritual perfection. The very word “craft” suggests a long preparation to be spiritually pure before death. The pursuit of perfection, however, led to considerable anxiety about the how well the practitioner succeeded.

Martin Luther comes to the rescue of those who fear that they have failed. In his Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterber he tells readers that fear is not appropriate as one faces death, because it denies the sacrifice of Christ to overcome human sin. Although Luther's sermon may not have been available in England, other works, including Desiderius Erasmus's Preparation to Death were London productions. Erasmus and other early sixteenth-century writers add humanism into the preparation for death, referring to classical authors and suggesting bravery rather than fear in meeting the end. Also present in even Erasmus's reflections is a realization of a prevalent form of death, public execution. In the turbulent days of Henry VIII's rejection of Rome, public death became a means of dying that one must be prepared for if on the losing side of the religious and political vicissitudes of the times.

Appleford's book is thoroughly researched, but sometimes background is missing. For example, she presents no full discussion of purgatory as a motivator of acts of charity such as those of Whittington, or of the fear of purgatory that was prevalent in the late fifteenth century. But purgatory was a reason that Londoners and others in England and elsewhere in northern Europe joined parish gilds: they sought to ensure that prayers would be said to hasten their passage to Heaven. And if the authors of the tracts Appleford studied did not dwell on purgatory, that in itself would be interesting.