Book excerpt: The Katherine Group brings together for the first time newly edited and translated versions of three dynamic saints' lives, The Lives of Saints Katherine, Margaret and Juliana, a quirky but rhetorically persuasive guide to virginity, Hali Meidenhad, and a psychologically astute sermon, Sawles Warde ("The Guardianship of the Soul"). These works are important witnesses to the development of Middle English writing after the Conquest and to the rigorous anchoritic spiritual life pursued by female recluses in medieval England.