This volume, just over four hundred pages of Latin text, some thirty pages of introductory material, and eighty pages of indices, is the result of nearly a decade of work by Emilie Amt – and it shows. Before coming to the introduction and the text, it is worth pausing to look at the map of the estates of Godstow with its detailed key to locations (pp. xii–xiii) and the list of Godstow abbesses (pp. xxxix–xlii). The information here is typical of the volume; the editor has been unstinting in the effort expended. The introduction itself (pp. xv–xxxviii) is written in a knowledgeably brisk fashion and perceptively works through ‘The manuscript’, ‘The contents of the cartulary’, ‘The foundation of the abbey, ‘The foundation legend text’ (in Anglo-Norman verse), ‘Patronage and benefactions' and ‘Financial and property management’. Following the text, there are three appendices, a short glossary and extensive indices. Emilie Amt has not only reattributed the cartulary to the time of Prioress Alice of Eaton in 1403/4 rather than to that of Abbess Alice of Henley in the late 1460s, but has fully contextualised and edited or summarised over 900 documents with care and precision. There is one image of the manuscript, as a frontispiece, though it would have been useful to have had a few more.

The National Archives, E 164/20, which contains the Latin cartulary, concerns the Benedictine convent of Godstow, north of Oxford, which lasted from the time of the first founder, Ediva of Winchester, in the early twelfth century, to the Dissolution. The cartulary is unusual in a number of respects. Allowing for the fact that there were far more male institutions than female and even more so for the destruction caused by the Dissolution and later vicissitudes, it is still striking that there are so few cartularies from convents in medieval England. This is not the place to investigate the reasons for this, although the problems of English nuns with Latin and literacy are often rightly cited. This makes the presence of a Latin cartulary from Godstow, attributed here to a female (nun) scribe, all the more noteworthy. Although Amt's arguments are more subtle and even-handed than the generalising statement by R. M. Smith in the foreword that this is the ‘only known instance of a cartulary in England produced by the hand of a female scribe as well as one of only a few instances of work by an English nun using Latin’ (p. vi), the point still holds. If this cartulary were written by a nun of Godstow, then it is significant not only for the history of Godstow, but also for the literacies of English nuns. Amt argues the point on the basis of the Latin preface to the text which notes that the cartulary was produced ‘sumptibus et labore Alicie de Eaton commonialis' (‘by the wealth and labour of Alice of Eaton, fellow nun’, p. xvi). Although this could mean that the said Alice financed the project, it is conceivable that Amt's interpretation, that Alice was the main scribe, is correct. Yet, paradoxically, not only is there this Latin cartulary that may – or may not – have been written by a nun, but also an English cartulary from Godstow from the late 1460s (the so-called English Register, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Rawlinson B. 408). The latter was definitely written by a male scribe who says that a translation from the Latin was produced because the nuns had difficulty understanding that language.

Indeed, the relationship between the Latin cartulary and the English Register is crucial to the whole edition. Amt's general policy is to edit texts written from about 1225 or earlier and to calendar the others (which she does very fully, and always with witness lists). She includes references to those that are translated into Middle English in the Register. While editions of all the texts would have been preferable, rather than having to refer to the translation in the Register with all the attendant linguistic difficulties for some readers, it is understandable (if not always ideal) that some means of abbreviation is used.

I would have liked more about the nuns' religious lives and education, but the cartulary is silent on most of these matters. Any such comment is incidental: for instance, nos 489, 524, 562, 705 and English Register, no.139 on grants for nuns' clothing; no. 842 on episcopal visitation; no. 899 which refers to a martyrology; no. 895 on the prayers of the lay sisters; no. 896 on the commemoration of a benefactor on Maundy Thursday, alongside umpteen references to grants of land or money associated with daughters, sisters or mothers becoming nuns (nos 272, 613, 772, 786, 788, 789, 812, 814, 818, 819, 870, 888). What comes across vividly is the idea of a living monastery, with all the day-to-day practical issues of leasing a cowshed (no. 199), tithe disputes (no. 414), or obtaining wine for their patronal feast (no. 784). People who would otherwise be lost from the record, such as Matilda who owned a tenement in St Giles's parish (nos 436, 438), or John Cilvestre, a spurrier, and Alice, his wife, who leased a shop from Godstow (no. 546) are brought to the fore.

The volume is rounded off with two superlative indices (of persons and places, and of subjects). Only experienced indexers understand the difficulty of producing indices that are useful and consistent and, most particularly, sufficiently wide-ranging to include entries that readers may even not have realised that they will want to check. This is especially the case in an edition that must appeal to a variety of scholarly interests. In the present case the indices allow one to distinguish between some sixty-nine different entries for ‘William’ in the cartulary and to pick one's way through any number of topics, from ‘abbess' to ‘wool-merchant’.

The British Academy should be very pleased with Emilie Amt's painstaking and comprehensive edition; readers will be in her debt.