This essay addresses the education of religious women, figured in terms of horizontal and vertical learning, in England at the end of the Middle Ages. It highlights connections between women rather than the more widely discussed relationships between women and their male spiritual advisors. From an examination of the texts obtained by women leaders of the late medieval womenߣs houses, including the English Bridgettine abbey of Syon, it is evident that superiors acquired works relating to the religious rule of life and other devotional texts, and aimed to enable their communities to understand their life and governance. Erler shows that such works were shared via the vertical learning of refectory and other communal readings. Alongside this, more traditional horizontal learning or hierarchical instruction also took place in womenߣs houses: nuns were expected to emulate their elders, and the elders to offer guidance, including in relation to their reading, to which the exchange of books between nuns was central practice. Finally, there is evidence of more formal convent instruction, framed in compassionate and supportive terms.

At present the earliest writing that survives from Richard Whitford's large body of work is his 1525 translation of the Augustinian rule (STC 922.3). Though he had entered religious life probably in 1511, the year of his will, his activity in the following fourteen years has not been traced, and this silence stands in sharp contrast to the flood of his publications in the later 1520s and the 1530s. Yet there is much to be said about Whitford's first years at Syon, a period, for him, as active as the better-known conclusion of his career. During this time the monastery was ruled by Abbess Elizabeth Gibbs (1497–1518), whose influence on Whitford he twice commemorated after her death and whose promotion of formational reading for Syon nuns was extensive.

Whitford's arrival at Syon would have come a little more than halfway through the tenure of Abbess Gibbs, and his recollections suggest that she was the force behind two of his early works. His A Dayly Exercyse and Experyence of Dethe does not survive before an edition dated [1534?] (STC 25413.7), but in this edition's preface, since Whitford recalls that he wrote it ‘more then .xx. yeres ago at the request of the reuerende Mother Dame Elizabeth Gybs … And by the oft callyng vpon and remembraunce of certayne of hyr deuout systers’, its composition may be dated around 1513. (Whitford adds that he has lately written the work out many times in response to requests and now is moved ‘to put it in print’.) Likewise in the Book of Patience, published as part of Whitford's final work in 1541, he says ‘I wrote this worke many yeres ago (as I sayd of ye werke of deth) & by lyke occasion’ (fol. A ii), that is, at the instigation of Elizabeth Gibbs. Because Patience refers to ‘your draft of dethe’, Patience is probably subsequent to that work, perhaps around 1514. Finally, Whitford's Werke for Housholders, though it is not connected explicitly with Abbess Gibbs, was also written earlier than its publication date would indicate. The first surviving edition of Werke is dated [1530?] (STC 25421.8), but James Hogg has pointed out that Dethe contains two references to Werke, which must thus have been written before c. 1513, possibly, as has been suggested, before Whitford's c. 1511 entry into religion.

Although we tend to see the demand for private reading as fuelling the work of early printers, it may be more correct to imagine printing's beginnings as spurred by what James Raven has called ‘a demand for objects viewed as worthy of possession’. These printed objects may not have been books, or if they were, may not have been books intended primarily for private reading. Three categories of early printing, in their great popularity, can illustrate what products of the press were early seen as valuable by a lay audience: indulgences, almanacs/calendars, Books of Hours. Patterns of publication show their widespread appeal and in the first part of this chapter we will examine these desirable kinds of early printing. Later and more conventionally, we will turn to books intended for private reading, focusing on the surviving volumes that belonged to a small group in the first thirty years after printing came to England, between 1476 and 1509. This is Margaret Beaufort's circle – a mixed company of aristocrats and gentry, male and female readers, who were connected to the king's mother by ties of blood or friendship or employment, and whose books give a collective sense of printing's first English lay readership.