The foundation of new English convents in exile placed demands on the early leaders regarding the furnishing of appropriate texts for the religious life for women at a time of limited resources and strict controls over printing Catholic texts in English. This article examines challenges facing the convents and external influences on the choice of titles, ranging from women’s reading experiences in their families to authors whose works appeared in libraries owned by both pious Catholic and Protestant lay women. It then considers how communities assembled collections of books in the first half of the exile period, concluding with an appendix giving some examples of surviving key texts found in convent libraries dating from the seventeenth century.
