S. C. Kaplan, Women’s Libraries in Late Medieval Bourbonnais, Burgundy, and France: A Family Affair. Exeter Studies in Medieval Europe. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2024, xii, 367 pp.

Although research has commonly assumed that medieval libraries, most precious treasuries of all culture, were created by male donors, authors, scribes, collectors, or editors, a more careful examination of the records especially of libraries associated with noble houses of the upper echelons of (late) medieval society sheds significant light on a rather different situation. Recent years have brought to light much new information about women’s convents and hence their libraries, and this already since the early Middle Ages. In her study, S. C. Kaplan focuses on the libraries at the great ducal houses in late medieval France and demonstrates through a careful scouring of the records that aristocratic lay women were much more involved in that area than we might have assumed. I am, however, not really surprised because considering, for instance, Christine de Pizan’s specifically female aristocratic audience throughout the fifteenth century, it is absolutely clear that noble ladies have traditionally enjoyed a higher educational exposure than their male contemporaries. Research on women’s patronage, triggered especially by Susan Groag Bell’s seminal article on “Medieval Women Book Owners” (1981; the name Groag is here only abbreviated), has already made much progress.