Late medieval Norwich, a centre for international commerce which enjoyed close trading links with the continent, and in particular Germany and the Low Countries, was well placed to be receptive to innovative forms of religious devotion and spirituality. In her search for answers to the questions that she poses at the beginning of this book, that is, ‘was there a distinctively female piety?’ in this region, and how was it influenced by links with continental Europe, Carole Hill has a wealth of evidence at her disposal – documentary, literary, artistic, material, as well as the forty-six parish churches in existence in the city by the 1520s. Her approach is first to investigate the cults of saints who appear to have appealed to the religiosity, as well as the material and psychological concerns, of lay women in Norwich: St Anne, the apocryphal mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St Margaret of Antioch, and St Mary Magdalen, as well as the more recent Brigit of Sweden. In discussing the lives, achievements, as well as the struggles, of the thrice-married wife of a successful merchant, the virgin martyr who suffered horribly for her faith, the reformed harlot turned hermit and preacher, and the chaste widow given to good works, Hill elucidates the reasons why women, including those of the flourishing mercantile classes, were drawn to their cults, and the ways in which their devotion was manifest. She then turns her attention to the evidence for female concerns about, and devotion to, the performance of the corporal works of mercy, which were closely associated with women through their traditional cultural role in caring for the body. Hill both discusses the evidence for female engagement in the works of mercy, and how the iconography with which medieval women in Norwich would have been surrounded in the churches of the city and diocese emphasised and nurtured this role. The book is attractively produced, and enhanced by twenty high-quality colour plates, which illustrate the wealth of artistic evidence upon which the author draws.