Describes the lives and achievements of virtuous virgins, marvellous maidens, and fierce feminists of the Middle Ages who trail-blazed paths for women today in fields dominated by men.

Susan Signe Morrison, Professor of English at Texas State University, is a medievalist and author of the first book dedicated to understanding medieval women pilgrims. Her two monographs -- Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer's Fecopoetics (Palgrave 2008) and The Literature of Waste: Material Ecopoetics and Ethical Matter (Palgrave 2015) -- propose "Waste Studies" as field of study for cultural and literary historians. She is also the author of a novel, Grendel's Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife (Top Hat Books, 2015), a feminist reimaging of the Old English Beowulf epic poem.