"When ... I received the habit," wrote one nun, "I remember as we walked down the street, passersby often scoffed or showed positive hatred." She found herself in the midst of a miracle that took place in Great Britain during the Oxford Movement - the revival of women's religious orders in the Church of England. The triumph over this hatred is one of the glories today as then of Anglo-Catholicism. Many readable accounts of the revival of monasticism in general during this period have been written, but no work has thus far turned its attention especially to the women who were so vital to its success. Susan Mumm's Stolen Daughters, Virgin Mothers will do much to remedy the lack.

From the founding of the Park Village Sisterhood in 1845, the presence of women's religious orders in the Anglican Communion has transformed their church. By 1900 there were, according to the author, between 3,000 and 4,000 women in religious orders in the Church of England. This book gives a close look at a number of sisterhoods - Clewer, Wantage, East Grinstead, and All Saints in particular.

Hostility to women's orders, based on accusations of vice in convents, family subversion and "Romanizing," receives lengthy treatment. So do the ostensible motives of women who devoted themselves to sisterhood work. This is a sociological study, and Mumm looks at the nuns from a largely secular rather than a religious or explicitly historical point of view.

Her work does, however, bring the history of what one writer called women who carried "music in their hearts - the music of intense love to God and man" into well-deserved print. It also opens horizons for others to continue the work. The story of American orders of women remains to be told in such detail, and so does that of women religious on both sides of the Atlantic in this century.

Richard J. Mammana, Jr.

New York, N.Y.