Chronological Chart of the Book of Margery Kempe

William E. Bolton

Any reader of the Book of Margery Kempe will immediately notice that it is rather difficult to follow the precise sequence of events it describes. The narrative jumps around chronologically with little explanation and the effect can be rather confusing. I have created the following chart in an attempt to relieve some of this confusion and to provide a vantage point from where one might be able to see a number of events of the Book in their configuration with one another and to various characters. I have used the timeline Meech and Allen provide in their introduction as a starting point or a general template and tried to fill in what I was able.

All of the references to the Book of Margery Kempe mentioned therein come from Meech and Allen’s 1940 EETS edition and follow their citation system of page and line number.

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References:

Alsford, Stephen. Medieval English Towns. 2006. <http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/towns.html#menu>

A biographical register of the University of Cambridge to 1500. Ed. Alfred Brotherston Emden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963. (Referred to as BRUC in the chart)

The Book of Margery Kempe. Ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen. London: Early English Text Society, 1940.

Owen, Dorothy M. The Making of King’s Lynn: A Documentary Survey. London: Oxford University Press for The British Academy, 1984.