Gail Orgelfinger, Joan of Arc in the English Imagination, 1429–1829. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, 230 pp., 17 b/w ill.

Abstract

Reviews of Joan of Arc books often rightly begin by asking whether there is the need for yet another book on Joan of Arc. In the case of biographies, one is tempted to answer, no. The known facts have not changed over 600 years, and new angles from which her life can be approached do not emerge as often as do new biographies. Oddly, however, the kind of detailed comparative study of Joan’s afterlife in England through four centuries, which Gail Orgelfinger has accomplished in this vigorous new book, still needs to be done for French chronicles (no less) and much of her French afterlife.