author
active 14th century Dan Michel
Known for a single surviving masterpiece, this 14th-century English writer gives modern readers a rare glimpse of Middle English prose in the Kentish dialect. His Ayenbite of Inwyt is valued both as a devotional work and as an important record of the language of its time.
1 Audiobook
The Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience) A Translation of Parts into Modern English
by active 14th century Dan Michel, active 1279 d'Orléans Laurent
About the author
Very little is known about Dan Michel of Northgate beyond what can be gathered from his own writing. He flourished around 1340 and is associated with Northgate in Canterbury, Kent.
He is best known as the author of Ayenbite of Inwyt (usually translated as Remorse of Conscience), a Kentish translation of a French religious treatise on vices and virtues. The work matters not only for its moral and devotional themes, but also because it preserves a vivid example of Middle English prose from southern England.
Because so little personal information survives, Dan Michel is remembered chiefly through this book. That single text has given him an enduring place in literary history as one of the notable voices of early English prose.