This book is innovative in that it provides an introduction to Ancrene Wisse, one of the most important works in English of the thirteenth century. It offers a new contextualisation which engages with the history of lay piety and vernacular spirituality in the Middle Ages, thus extending analysis of the book beyond its original purpose as a guide for anchoresses. The placing of Ancrene Wisse within this context also allows comparisons to be made with other literature for semi-regular women, such as sermons preached to beguines – semi-religious women who formed communities in the Low Countries and France in the High Middle Ages.A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project.