MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
Ancrene Wisse is a guide written in the early thirteenth century for anchoresses, women who chose to live enclosed in a cell attached to a church. Tolkien published his edition of its English text in 1962 as volume 249 of the Early English Text Society, printed by Oxford University Press, with an introduction by N.R. Ker.
The book is a careful transcription of the manuscript held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 402. The text mattered a great deal to Tolkien: in a 1929 essay he had shown that it and some related works were written in a distinct West Midland dialect, which he called the AB language.
Tolkien's edition of the English text of Ancrene Wisse, a thirteenth century guide for anchoresses, from the Cambridge manuscript.
