Hope Emily Allen (1883–1960),[1] was an American medievalist who is best known for her research on the 14th-century English mystic Richard Rolle and for her discovery of a manuscript of the Book of Margery Kempe.

[6] During World War I, she remained in the United States, working on Rolle, frequently writing to her friends in England, and sending them care packages.

[2][7] Her writing falls into three overlapping groups: her early work on the Ancrene Riwle; her insight into the study of Richard Rolle; and her research on the cultural background of The Book of Margery Kempe.

In work on both the Ancrene Riwle and Margery Kempe, she identified a need for a "history of culture", extending both the range of material to be considered, and the kinds of questions to be asked.

In 1927 she published Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, and Materials for His Biography in the third volume of the Monograph Series of the Modern Language Association of America.

[citation needed] In 1934, Allen identified the one surviving manuscript of the Book of Margery Kempe, an autobiographical account of a Norfolk mystic and pilgrim, mentioned, with a few pages of extracts, by Wynkyn de Worde about 1501.

[10] Allen returned to the United States in the 1930s, living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she continued to pursue her research and writing, and to carry on correspondence with friends and scholars such as Joan Wake.

[citation needed] Allen asked Sanford Brown Meech, a colleague at Michigan, to collaborate with her in editing The Book of Margery Kempe.

Nevertheless, Allen promoted a secular, feminist criticism of the Book of Margery Kempe, raising issues of the materiality of the text and its cultural production in addition to its content.

[12] It was a painful comparison to her earlier active life, of which she had written, "when libraries were closed I walked all day in [King's] Lynn, poking into all the corners both of streets and churches.