This collection of texts is designed to show the continuity and at the same time the diversity of work by English writers in the religious prose tradition during the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. The aim of the edition has been to provide the student with a selection of complete texts representative of the Middle English period as a whole, and the criticial introduction points to the literary excellence of much of the prose work of the period, suggesting that it may have been undervalued by critics in the past.