Books under Suspicion

“Kerby-Fulton’s book simply rewrites the history of heterodoxy in late-medieval England. . . . It would be hard to walk away from the book with any assumptions intact about medieval England’s insularity, its impermeability to Continental heterodoxy, and its total domination by Wycliffism. . . . Kerby-Fulton’s stunning codicological work is the book’s greatest resource, and its ambition its most admirable trait. She has done a great service to the profession with this book, and it will prove a monument of literary scholarship in years to come.” —Yearbook of Langland Studies

"Kathryn Kerby-Fulton concentrates on the reign of Richard II . . . and contends that total censorship was a more subtle process before the uniformity imposed by the printed book. . . . I am sure that [the] book will spark controversy, making many of us re-examine old assumptions." —Times Literary Supplement

“Kerby-Fulton modestly claims that hers is but a beginning study that only suggests lines of enquiry. Possibly, but her detailed study and observations make this a bedrock for further study on Medieval censorship. It belongs in academic libraries supporting graduate study in religious or literary history.” —Catholic Library World

“In Books Under Suspicion, Kerby-Fulton brings this second image of medieval culture brilliantly to life in the specific instance of attitudes toward revelatory writing in England from 1329 to 1437, a period of robust tolerance, and on the whole, as she puts it, 'an age of failed censorship.' . . . Books Under Suspicion is bound to mark a turning point in scholars' understanding of the pervasive cultural awareness and tolerance of heterodox theology in late-medieval England. That turning point will be evident not only in scholars' use of the wealth of information and insight that Kerby-Fulton makes available in this book but also in the new research it will stimulate.” —Journal of the Early Book Society

“In many ways, this is a bravura display of book history. By building her study of manuscripts as much as texts, Kerby-Fulton has-perhaps fully, for the first time in an English context-uncovered the complex dynamics of learned communities in the Black Death period, the undermighty nature of the Oxford and Cambridge schoolrooms by comparison with the intellectual inventiveness and intrigue, and the publishing power of the communities of mendicants, monks, and professional clerks in the provinces.” —American Historical Review

“Kerby-Fulton's admirable book is necessary reading for all who are interested in the textual culture of England at the end of the middle ages.” —The English Historical Review

“With Books Under Suspicion, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton has accomplished something remarkable. This far-reaching study does nothing less than shift the paradigms with which we think about such fundamental categories as heterodoxy, orthodoxy, theology, and revelation in relation to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English religious cultures. Her original, painstaking study of manuscripts also leads us to revise our thinking about major canonical English writers including Chaucer, Langland, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe . . . no scholar or student of Middle English literature, or medieval English religion, should be without this sophisticated, groundbreaking volume.” —Church History

"Engagingly written and persuasively argued, it provides a tremendously nuanced view of a period of religious debate and censorship that has been all too easily flattened in contemporary scholarship. . . The excitement one gains in reading Kathryn Kerby-Fulton's work is exceeded only by the awareness of the richness of scholarship yet to come that will continue to explore the wide range of theological speculation and revelatory prophecy in late medieval England." —Comitatus

"Kathryn Kerby-Fulton's latest book will rapidly become essential reading for scholars of medieval literature. In her study of the reception history of various prophetic and visionary writings, she has provided a thoroughly revisionist account of theological politics in England in the late medieval period.” —College Literature

“Kerby-Fulton's monumental work serves modern scholars as a guide to the complexity of English manuscript culture as it relates to visionary writing and the censoring pressure it both invited and resisted. Engaging with the demands of Books under Suspicion will take the reader into a world of medieval writing and reading that cannot be contained by our own sense of disciplinary boundaries.” —Rocky Mountain Review