For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels.

Julian's manuscripts are protected by trusted sisters and are passed from hand to hand, become the first book to be written by a woman in English. This book is going to introduce many new readers to Julian and inspire others who know her slightly to go back with fresh eyes and a reinvigorated sense of how her writing developed and in what sort of historical setting. using no words save perhaps one word, and with that little word gently repeating my soul quietens and softens and the little word enters me and brings me to deep, deep rest in my soul, which becomes no place. We see Julian’s early life from 1347: childhood, the great Plague, death of her father, her marriage, recurrence of plague, death of Julian’s husband and daughter, and her rejection of the prospect of remarriage. In writing Revelations of Divine Love, Dame Julian became the first known female author in the English language.Frankly, I bought it because it seemed like it might present some good 14th-century social history – and because of the quite beautiful dust-jacket on the first-edition hardcover (to the publishers: yes, your eye-catching designs do work). From the author of Miles to Go before I Sleep comes I, Julian, the account of a medieval woman who dares to tell her own story, battling grief, plague, the church and societal expectations to do so. Words failed as Love itself was set free in the encounter, melted from the ice that kept it prisoner. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review.

Tender, luminous, meditative and powerful, this is a powerful fictional retelling of the life of Julian of Norwich – the mother, mystic and radical.

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