SOURCE: Ackerman, Robert W. and Roger Dahood. “General Introduction.” In Ancrene Riwle: Introduction and Part I, edited and translated by Robert W. Ackerman and Roger Dahood, pp. 3-38. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1984.

In the following essay, Ackerman and Dahood explain the advent of the solitary life and provide an abstract of Ancrene Riwle.

The aim of the present edition is to make available for students an often neglected portion of Ancrene Riwle in a form demonstrably close to that which was actually known and used in the thirteenth century. These pages set forth, in addition to the short Introduction, the daily round of devotions, the central core of the anchoress's existence. In his edition, restricted to Parts VI and VII, Geoffrey Shepherd was particularly interested in those moving passages designed, in his words, “to stimulate and control acts of penance and love in daily life...