The Galloping Nun

Sister Chiara was a socialite who became a Franciscan nun, after the death of her husband.

This is the story of Sister Chiara, the socialite who became a Franciscan nun. Born into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, presented at court and married to an army officer, Chiara Hatton Hall set up a riding school for the international social elite. Her students included the young Princess Royal, Princess Anne. At the age of 42, after the death of her husband, Chiara found her vocation as a religious and exchanged her jodhpurs for a Franciscan habit. Embracing a life of poverty, chastity and obedience, she was later to become an instructing judge on a diocesan marriage tribunal. Then, at the suggestion of an imaginative superior, she took up the reins again – this time to work for Riding for the Disabled, travelling the world to teach riding instructors how to bring confidence, self-respect and joy to mentally and physically handicapped adults and children. Sister Chiara looks back on a life of dramatic contrasts that were ultimately reconciled by embracing the spirit of St Francis.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Julia Bolton Holloway's The Pilgrim and the Book: A Study of Dante, Langland and Chaucer investigates major fourteenth-century texts, the Commedia, Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales, in the light of the medieval theory and practice of pilgrimage, especially concentrating on Emmaus and Exodus paradigms. Holloway's analysis draws extensively on iconography, musicology, typology and anthropology. The concluding chapter explains why each poet places himself within his poem - in his own image - as a pilgrim.

Three brothers embark on daring journeys in this epic of high adventure that reimagines the origins of monumental discoveries in ancient history. Afraid that Aleph may have taught his sister, Beth, the priestly writing, his father sends him to climb the mountain as punishment. But Aleph couldn’t teach Beth the sacred writing even if he tried—there are so many symbols, and he just can’t seem to learn them. Instead, he and Beth have invented a new way of writing with only twenty-two letters. But his father won’t hear it, and so Aleph must go up the mountain to count the felled trees at the lumber camp. Near the top of the mountain, however, Aleph discovers that all is not as it should be: The camp is empty! Curious, he sets off to find the loggers, never suspecting that the writing game he played with his sister will become invaluable, nor that his search will take him much farther than the mountaintop. Meanwhile, Aleph’s two older brothers are on journeys of their own. Zayin, the eldest and a general in their city-state Gebal’s small army, is on a quest to find monsters in the Valley of the Centaurs. Nun, the second son, aims for the sea and the Court of Minos. Then, grave news sends all three brothers hurrying home to protect their small city. But something even more disastrous looms on the horizon . . . From beloved children’s author Clive King (Stig of the Dump), The 22 Letters is an epic tale of three great advances in history, told through the adventures of four young siblings.

Drawing on art history, literary studies and social history, the essays in this volume explore a range of intersections between gender and constructions of childhood in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries in Italy, England, France and Spain. The essays are grouped around the themes of celebration and loss, education and social training, growing up and growing old. Contributors grapple with ways in which constructions of childhood were inflected by considerations of gender throughout the early modern world. In so doing, they examine representations of children and childhood in a range of sources from the period, from paintings and poetry to legal records and personal correspondence. The volume sheds light on some of the ways in which, in the relations between Renaissance children and their parents and peers, gender mattered. Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood enriches our understanding of individual children and the nature of familial relations in the early modern period, as well as of the relevance of gender to constructions of self and society.