Women in the Middle Ages led fascinating and often wildly differing everyday lives, depending on their social class and family situation. However, to date this rich variety of experience has not been fully brought to light, because books on the general subject of 'life in the Middle Ages' tend to have multiple chapters devoted to men of different classes (kings, lords, knights, merchants, tradesmen, monks, and so on) and then one chapter at the end entitled 'women', as though the female half of the population was some kind of homogenous mass! But women's experiences varied just as much as men's did, and in this book we will turn the spotlight on them, in lively and interesting detail, as we meet women of all social classes and learn about their lives. A number of medieval women have been the subject of previous studies and biographies. However, they tend to be the exceptional figures who broke the mould, which leads us to ask: What about the women who were not exceptional, who did not blaze a new trail? What was life like for the vast majority who were obliged to live within the constraints imposed on the female half of the population? This book will provide answers to these questions, shedding light on the full breadth of their experiences for the first time. AUTHOR: Dr Catherine Hanley holds a PhD in Medieval Studies (Sheffield, 2001), is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and is the author of historical works in several genres. Her scholarly writing includes a monograph based on her PhD thesis and academic journal articles in the UK, US and France, as well as contributions to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology. She has written seven books of popular history: three for Yale University Press, two for The History Press and one each for Osprey and Pen & Sword. 20 illustrations