As the dates in the title suggest, this is not primarily a study of the writings of Margery Kempe. The author has instead set out to explore the journey of the book itself from the period of Henry viii's break with Rome to its reappearance in the possession of Colonel William Butler-Bowdon. The text's existence at Mount Grace priory pre-Reformation is secure. Chappell's contention is that from there it was taken to the London Charterhouse by the prior of that house, John Houghton, in 1533 and then, sometime between 1534 and 1538, was rescued and taken home by Everard Digby, a brother of the London house. It then passed through the Digbys to the Erdeswicks and hence in due course to the Bowdens. None of this is impossible, but it is disconcerting how quickly speculation here hardens into assertion. Discussion of what the author calls the book's ‘five perilous passages’ takes up sixty-seven pages. This is preceded by a ‘proym’ describing the writer's developing engagement with Margery, presented here as a woman in search of control over her own life ‘rather than under the constraints of being a medieval woman loosed upon a myopic patriarchal world’ (p. xxi). A final chapter, drawing on the papers of Hope Emily Allen, charts the Book's progress into print, also presented explicitly as the struggle of a female against male hegemony.