In 1598, the first English convent was established in Brussels and was to be followed by a further 21 enclosed convents across Flanders and France with more than 4,000 women entering them over a 200 year period. In theory they were cut off from the outside world; however, in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely and their communal culture was sophisticated. This interdisciplinary collection demonstrates the cultural importance of the English convents in exile from 1600 to 1800 and is the first collection to focus solely on the English convents.

Caroline Bowden is Research Fellow and former Project Manager of the 'Who were the Nuns?' project funded by the AHRC at Queen Mary, University of London, and has published a number of papers on women's education and learning and the English convents in exile. James E. Kelly is post-doctoral fellow at Durham University's Centre for Catholic Studies, Project Manager of the 'Nuns' project at Queen Mary's and researches post-Reformation Catholic history in Europe and Britain.

Introduction Part I Communities 1 From Community to Convent: The Collective Spiritual Life of Post-Reformation Englishwomen in Dorothy Arundell's Biography of John Cornelius 2 Essex Girls Abroad: Family Patronage and the Politicization of Convent Recruitment in the Seventeenth Century 3 Missing Members: Selection and Governance in the English Convents in Exile Part II Culture: Authorship and Authority 4 The Literary Lives of Nuns: Crafting Identities Through Exile 5 Naming Names: Chroniclers, Scribes and Editors of St Monica's Convent, Louvain, 1631-1906 6 Translating Lady Mary Percy: Authorship and Authority among the Brussels Benedictines 7 Barbara Constable's Advice for Confessors and the Tradition of Medieval Holy Women 8 Shakespeare's Sisters: Anon and the Authors in Early Modern Convents Part III Culture: Patronage and Visual Culture 9 Petitioning for Patronage: An Illuminated Tale of Exile from Syon Abbey, Lisbon 10 Parlour, Court and Cloister: Musical Culture in English Convents during the Seventeenth Century 11 Cloistered Images: Representations of English Nuns, 1600-1800 Part IV Identity 12 Archipelagic Identities in Europe: Irish Nuns in English Convents 13 Divine Love and the Negotiation of Emotions in Early Modern English Convents 14 Avoiding 'Rash and Imprudent Measures': English Nuns in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1801