''Margery Kempe'' is a 1994 novel by

New Narrative New Narrative is a movement and theory of experimental writing launched in San Francisco in the late 1970s by Robert Glück and Bruce Boone. New Narrative strove to represent subjective experience honestly without pretense that a text can be absol ...

founding member

Robert Glück The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of ''Hrōþ, Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory ...

. It is a retelling of

Margery Kempe ' Margery Kempe ( – after 1438) was an English Christian mystic, known for writing through dictation ''The Book of Margery Kempe'', a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. Her book chronicles Kempe's do ...

's purported writing, ''

The Book of Margery Kempe ''The Book of Margery Kempe'' is a medieval text attributed to Margery Kempe, an English Christian mystic and pilgrim who lived at the turn of the fifteenth century. It details Kempe's life, her travels, her alleged experiences of divine revelati ...

'', through a narrator named Bob who is in love with a man named L. It was republished in 2020 by

New York Review Books New York Review Books (NYRB) is the publishing division of ''The New York Review of Books''. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, The New York Review Children's Collection, New York Review Comics, N ...

Background and publication

was a mystic in the 1400s who is purported to have written an

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

entitled ''

''. It is sometimes referred to as the first autobiography written in the English language.

published ''Margery Kempe'' in 1994 with

High Risk Books High Risk Books was a book publisher, founded in New York City in 1993 as an imprint of Serpent's Tail Press of London. It was started by Ira Silverberg and Amy Scholder who was then an editor at City Lights Books in San Francisco. Its titles were ...

. It is a work in the

movement, a collection of experimental writing with

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

themes and authors. It is a retelling of ''The Book of Margery Kempe'' based on Barry Windeatt's 1985 translation of the text. It centers on its 40-year-old narrator, Bob, who discusses his love of a man named L. in Kempe's style; in some cases, Glück directly quotes from Kempe's writing, though the story itself is set in the twentieth century. Like ''The Book of Margery Kempe'', Glück's novel is mostly focused on the interior life of Bob and the struggles of naming emotions through language.

Reissue

In 2020,

reissued the novel; it included a foreword by

Colm Tóibín Colm Tóibín (, approximately ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet. His first novel, '' The South'', was published in 1990. '' The Blackwater Lightship'' was shortlis ...

Background and publication

Reissue

References

Citations

Works cited