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A Paston Bibliography

Historical Novel – an excellent way to get to know the Paston characters

Castor, Helen, Blood and Roses: One Family's Struggle and Triumph during the Tumultuous Wars of the Roses, Faber & Faber, 2005

New to the Pastons?

Barber, Richard, Ed., The Pastons: The Letters of a Family in the Wars of the Roses, Boydell Press, 2004

Care, Lucy and Earl, Jack, Exploring Paston Country, Poppyland Publishing, 2009
www.poppyland.co.uk/products/B14886

Castor, Helen, “Paston Family, 1420 – 1504”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/ref:odnb/21511

Curran, Susan, The Marriage of Margery Paston, Lasse Press, 2013

Giles, Joseph, A Medieval Family: The Pastons of Fifteenth Century England, Harper Collins, 1998

Gristwood, Sarah, Blood Sisters: The Hidden Lives of the Women Behind the Wars of the Roses, Harper Collins, 2012

Iboji, Mike, Paston Family Letters, BBC, 2011
www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/pastonletters_01.shtml

Peverley, Sarah, “Medieval Paston Letters”
sarahpeverley.com/tag/paston-letters/

Virgoe, Roger, Private Life in the Fifteenth Century: Illustrated Letters of the Paston Family, Macmillan, 1989

Watt, Diane, The Paston Women: Selected Letters, D. S. Brewer, 2004

Whittock, Martyn, The Pastons in Medieval Britain, History Eyewitness (1993), Heinemann

The Pastons, Literary Norfolk
www.literarynorfolk.co.uk/paston.htm

Paston Research

Agnew, Jean, Ed., The Whirlpool of Misadventures: Letters of Robert Paston, First Earl of Yarmouth, 1663-1679, Norfolk Record Society, 2012

Anselment, Raymond A., “Katherine Paston and Brillana Harley: Maternal Letters and the Genre of Mother's Advice”, pp. 431-53, Studies in Philology 101 (2004). DOI: 10.1353/sip.2004.0018

Arn, Mary-Jo, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 24, pp. 237-267, “Thomas Chaucer and William Paston Take Care of Business: HLS Deeds 34” (2016). DOI: 10.1353/sac.2002.0045

Barron, Caroline, “Who were the Pastons?”, pp. 530-535, Journal of the Society of Archivists 4 (1972). DOI: 10.1080/00379817209513997

Barwell, Ashlee, “The Healing Arts and Social Capital: The Paston Women of Fifteenth-Century England”, pp. 137-159, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 35 (2018)

Bühler, Curt F., “Sir John Paston's Grete Boke, a Fifteenth Century Best Seller”, pp. 345-351, Modern Language Notes 56 (1941)

Bühler, Curt F., “Some New Paston Documents”, pp. 129-142, The Review of English Studies 14 (1938), Reaktion Books

Beadle, Richard, Ed., “Prolegomena to a Literary Geography of Later Medieval Norfolk”, pp. 89-108, Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, Ed. F. Riddy (1991), Cambridge University Press

Beadle, Richard and Hellinger, Lotte, “William Paston II and Pynson's Statues of War”, Library: 2 (2001). DOI: 10.1093/library/2.2.107

Beadle, Richard and Richmond, Colin, “The Expenses of John Paston I, 1457 – 58”, pp. 281-287, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 41 (2005)

Ed. Richard Beadle and Colin Richmond, Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century Part 3, Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century (2005), Oxford University Press

Bennett, H.S., The Pastons and their England: Studies in the Age of Transition, Cambridge University Press, 1990

Bergs, Alexander, Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics: Studies in Morphosyntactic Variation in the Paston Letters (1421-1503), Mouton de Gruytor, 2005. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404508080512

Blomefield, Francis and Parkin, Charles, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, Vol. III: The City and County of Norwich, William Maler, 1806

Blomefield, Francis and Parkin, Charles, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, Vol. VIII, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (1810), William Maler

Blomefield, Francis and Parkin, Charles, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, Vol. XI, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (1810), William Maler

Breeze, Andrew, “Margaret Paston's 'Grene a Lyere'”, Notes and Queries 45 (1998)

Breeze, Andrew, “Sir John Paston on 'Ser Hughe Lavernoys' ”, pp. 10-11, Notes and Queries 48 (2001)

Breeze, Andrew, “Sir John Paston, Lydgate and The Libelle of Englysche Polycye”, pp. 10-11, Notes & Queries 48 (2001)

Breeze, Andrew, “Sir John Pastons' meeting 'Metyng of the Dwke and of the Emperour' ”, pp. 229-230, Notes & Queries 48 (2001)

Brett, Philip, “Edward Paston (1550-1630): A Norfolk Gentleman and his Musical Collection”, pp. 51-69, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vol. 4, no. 1 (1964)
www.jstor.org/stable/41337105

Brewer, D.S., “Sir John Paston's 'Grete boke': a descriptive catalogue, with an introduction, of British Library MS Lansdowne 285”, 1984

Britnell, R.H., “The Pastons and their Norfolk”, pp. 132-144, Agricultural Historical Review 36 (1988)
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230240827_3

Bucklow, Spike, The Anatomy of Riches: Sir Robert Paston's Treasure, Reaktion Books, 2018

Charles, Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, Oxford University Press, 1913

Cherewatuk, Karen, “Aural and Written Reception in Sir John Paston, Malory and Caxton”, pp. 121-131, Essays in Medieval Studies 21 (2014)
muse.jhu.edu/article/181085

Clayton, Jayne, “Elizabeth Clere and Marriage between the Clere and Paston Families in the Late Fifteenth Century”, pp. 214-216, Notes and Queries 66 (2019)

Coates, Richard, “A Paston Letter of 1461 and 'Coroumbr', Yorkshire: The Flight of Henry VI after Towton”, pp. 1-3, Northern History 57 (2020). DOI: 10.1080/0078172X.2020.1744886

Conde-Silvestre, Camilo J., Garcia-Vidal, Tamara and Hernandez-Campoy, Juan M., “Tracing Patters of Intra-Speaker Variation in Early English Correspondence: A Change from Above in the Paston Letters”, pp. 287-314, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 54 (2019)
doaj.org/article/172674b82c1f4d9abc474f92051d23cd

Conde-Silvestre, Camilo J. and Hernandez-Campoy, Juan M., “Tracing the Generational Progress of Language Change in Fifteenth-century English: the Digraph in the 'Paston Letters'”, pp. 279-299, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 114 (2010)
www.jstor.org/stable/43344616

Creelman, Victoria, “Margaret Paston's Use of Captenesse”, pp. 275-277, 2008

Creelman, Victoria, “Quotation and Self-Fashioning in Margaret Paston's Household Letters”,, pp. 111-128, English Studies in Canada 30 (2019)

Davis, Norman, “A Paston Hand”, pp. 209-221, Review of English Studies 3 (1952)

Davis, Norman, “A Scribal Problem in the Paston Letters”,, pp. 31-64, English and Germanic Studies 4 (1951)

Davis, Norman, “Margaret Paston's Use of 'Do' ”, pp. 55-62, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73 (1972)

Davis, Norman, “The Text of Margaret Paston's Letters”, pp. 13-18, Medium Aevum 18 (1949)

Davis, Norman, Ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century Part 1, Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century (1971), Clarendon Press

Davis, Norman, Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century Part 2, Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century (1976), Clarendon Press

Davis, Norman and Ivy, G.S., “MS Rye and its French Grammar”, pp. 110-124, Medium Aevum 31 (1962)
www.jstor.org/stable/43626974

Douglas, Jennifer, “ 'Kepe wysly youre wrytyngys': Margaret Paston 's Fifteenth Century Letters”,, Libraries and the Cultural Record 44 (2009)

Faurot, Ruth Marie, “From Records to Romance: Stevenson's The Black Arrow and the Paston Letters”, pp. 677-690, Studies in English Literature 5 (1965). DOI: 10.2307/449435

Fendley, John, “The Pastons of Horton and the Horton Court Library”, pp. 501-528, British Catholic History 22 (1995). DOI: 10.1017/S0034193200002053

Finch, Jonathan, “Church Monuments in Norfolk before 1850: The Archaeology of Commemoration”, pp. 32, 61, B.A.R. British Series 217 (2000)

Flis, Nathan, “The Paston Treasure: A Painting that Reveals an Entire World while Concealing an Alchemical Secret”, 2018
yalebooksblog.co.uk/2018/06/20/curator-nathan-flis-unpacks-the-paston-treasure

Ed. Nathan Flis, Andrew Moore and Franceska Vanke, The Paston Treasure: Microcosm of the Known World, Yale University Press, 2018

Gastle, Brian W., “Breaking the Stained Glass Ceiling: Mercantile Authority, Margaret Paston and Margery Kempe”, pp. 123-147, Studies in the Literary Imagination 36 (2003)

Hanks, Thomas D., “Prose, not Prosaic: Narration in the Prose of Malory and of the Paston Family”, pp. 35-52, Parenthesis: Papers in Medieval Studies 1 (1999)

Hernandez-Campoy, Juan M., “Ladylikeness and Sociolinguistic Submission in Late Medieval English Society: Gender-based Use of Negation in John Paston I and Margaret Paston”, pp. 11-33, Atlantis 35 (2013)
www.jstor.org/stable/43486037

Hughey, Ruth, The Correspondence of Lady Katherine Paston, 1603 – 1627, Norfolk Record Society Vol. XIV, Ed. Percy Millican (1941), Norfolk Record Society

Keen, Maurice, “The First English Family Letters”, 1959
www.historytoday.com/archive/first-english-family-letters

Ketton-Cremer, R. W., Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition: The Pastons, May – August 1953, Norwich Castle Museum, 1953

Ketton-Cremer, R. W., Norfolk in the Civil War. A Portrait of a Society in Conflict, Faber & Faber, 1969

Ketton-Cremer, R. W., Norfolk Portraits, Faber & Faber, 1944

Knight, Stephen and Ohlgren, Thomas, Robin Hood and other Outlaw Tales, pp. 269-274, Medieval Institute Publications, 1997

Knights, Frances, “The Paston Manuscripts as Sources of Byrd's Music”, pp. 56-84, Notes 77 (2020)

Knights, Frances, “The Transmission of Motets within the Paston Manuscripts, c. 1610”, pp. 137-162, Muzikologija 27 (2019)

Knowles, David, “The Religion of the Pastons”, pp. 143-163, Downside Review 42 (1924)

Krugg, Rebecca, Reading Families: Women's Literate Practice in Late Medieval England, Cornell University Press, 2002

Langston, J.N., “The Pastons of Horton”, pp. 357-371, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 77 (1958). DOI: 10.1017/S0034193200002053

Maddern, Philippa, Ed., “ 'Best Trusted Friends': Concepts of Practices of Friendship among the Fifteenth Century Norfolk Gentry”, pp. 100-117, England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton Symposium, Ed. Nicholas Rogers, Paul Watkings (1994)

Maddern, Philippa, “Honour among the Pastons: Gender and Integrity in Fifteenth Century English Provincial Society”, pp. 357-371, Journal of Medieval History 14 (1998). DOI: 10.1016/0304-4181(88)90033-4

Marshall, John, “ 'goon in-to Bernysdale': the Trail of the Paston Robin Hood Tale”, Leeds Studies in English, New Series, xxix (2002)

Marshall, K.N., The Pastons 1378-1732, Jarrold, 1957

Matheson, Lister M. and Ohigren, Thomas, “Richard Call, the Pastons and the Manuscript Context of Robin Hood and the Potter (Cambridge University Library Ee. 4.35.1), with an Appendix on Dialect Analysis by Lister M Matheson”, pp. 210-233, Nottingham Medieval Studies, vol. XLV (2001)
www.irhb.org/wiki/index.php/Ohlgren,_Thomas_H_2001a

McCoy, Stewart, “Edward Paston and the Textless Lute-Song”, pp. 221-227, Early Music 15 (1987)
www.jstor.org/stable/3127483

Moerenhaut, Mike and van der Wurff, Wim, “Remnants of the Old Order: OV in the Paston Letters”, pp. 513-530, English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature, 81

Nakayasu, Minako, “Spatio-temporal Systems in Paston Letters”, pp. 75-89, Studia Neophilologica 89 (2017). DOI: 10.1080/00393274.2017.1317020

Ogura, Michiko, “Have Do Make and Have Do and Make in the Paston Letters”, pp. 8-10, Notes and Queries 50 (2003)

Pritchard, Gillian, “Religion and the Pastons”, pp. pp. 65-82, Daily Life in the Late Middle Ages, Ed. Richard Britnell (1998), Sutton

Richmond, Colin, Ed., “Elizabeth Clere: Friend of the Pastons”, pp. 251-273, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain, Ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Brown et al (2002), Brepols

Richmond, Colin, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: The First Phase, Cambridge University Press, 1990

Richmond, Colin, The Pastons in the Fifteenth Century: Endings, Cambridge University Press, 2000

Richmond, Colin, The Pastons in the Fifteenth Century: Fastolf's Will, Cambridge University Press, 1996

Robbins, Edgar C., William Paston, Justice, Founder of the Paston Family, 1578 – 1444, Jarrold, 1932

Rosenthal, Joel T., Margaret Paston's Piety, Macmillan, 2010

Rosenthal, Joel T., Margaret Paston, Matriarch of the Paston Family, Larks Press, 2009

Roster, Josephine, “The Hand of the Master: Sexing Palaeography in the Paston Letters”, pp. 206-230, Medieval Perspectives 19 (2004)

Rowling, Marjorie A., “New Evidence on the Disseisin of the Pastons from their Norfolk Manor of Gresham, 1448 – 1451”, Norfolk Archaeology 40 (1989)

Sarah Salih, Ed., “Margaret Paston”, pp. 529-530, Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing, Ed. Lorna Sage (1999), Cambridge University Press

Sequera, Hector, “Reconstructing William Byrd's consort songs from the Paston lutebooks: a historically informed and computational approach to comparative analysis and musical idiom”, pp. 455-477, Early Music 47 (2019). DOI: 10.1093/em/caz069

Smith, Anthony, “ 'The greatest man of that age': the acquisition of Sir John Fastolf's East Anglian estates, Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England: Essays Presented to Gerald Harriss”, Hambledon Press, 1995

Spedding, Alison, “ 'I shall send word in writing': Lexical Choices and Legal Acumen in the Letters of Margaret Paston”, pp. 241-259, Medium Aevum 77 (2018). DOI: 10.2307/43632339

Stoker, David, “Innumerable Letters of Good Consequence in History: Discovery and First Publication of the Paston Letters”, pp. 107-155, The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 17 (1995)
academic.oup.com/library/article/s6-17/2/107/951257

Swynfen, Jervis Simon, “The Paston Perspective”, pp. 536-544, Burlington 160 (2018)
www.burlington.org.uk/archive/search-archive/search/result

Taylor, Andrew, “The Chivalric Miscellany: Classifying John Paston's 'Grete Booke' ”, pp. 143-156, ”, Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain, Eds. Margaret Connolly, Raluca Radeslcu, Ed. Margaret Connolly, Raluca Radesclu (2015), Oxford University Press

Taylor, Philip, “Memorializing Mary Tudor: William Byrd and Edward Paston's 'Crowned with Flowers and Lillies' ”, pp. 170-190, Music & Letters 93 (2012). DOI: 10.1093/ml/gcs008
academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/93/2/170/1015607?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Trevor-Roper, H.R., “Up and Down in the Country: The Paston Letters”, Historical Letters (1961), Harper

Turner, Dawson, “The Will of Margaret Paston”, pp. 157-176, NA 3 (1849). DOI: org/10.5284/1077291
archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/details.xhtml?recordId=3236315

Turner, Dawson, Sketch of the History of Caister Castle, nr. Yarmouth, Whittaker, 1842

Underhill, Frances, For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare, Clare College Cambridge
barnes1.net/FHGE

Virgoe, Roger, Private Life in the Fifteenth Century: Illustrated Letters of the Paston Family, Macmillan, 1989

Watt, Diane, “No Writing for Writing's Sake”, pp. 122-138, Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genrem, Ed. Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus (1993), University of Pennsylvania Press

Whitaker, Elaine E., “Reading Paston Letters Medically, pp. 19-27, English Language Notes 31 (1993)

Yaxley, David, Ed., Oxnead 1654-56: Accounts of Oxnead Hall, home of Sir William Paston, Larks Press, 2015

Yaxley, David, Sir William Paston, Larks Pocket Biographies no. 6 (1995), Larks Press

PhD Theses

Included in this list are studies that have the Pastons as their primary focus, many others that contain smaller sections on the Pastons have not been included. Where a thesis has been reworked as a book or journal publication, the thesis is not listed here, instead there is an entry in the research section above. We recommend searching ProQuest for specialist interests, and for MA theses.

Collins, Janet Duthie, "The Paston Letters: a New Approach to Diachronic Linguistic Change", Saint Louis University, 1972

Jones, Charles Kirkland, “Proverbs, Proverbial Wisdom, and Medieval 'Topoi' in the Paston Letters”, University of Wisconsin – Madison, 1971

Lehman, Patricia Voichahoske, “Text Act and Tradition: Salutations and Status in the Paston Family, 1440 – 1495 (Ars Dictamina, Middle English, Sociolinguistics, Medieval Rhetoric)”, University of Michigan, 1986

Macdonald, Elizabeth, “Uncommon Readers? The Paston Family and the Textual Cultures of Fifteenth-Century East Anglia”, University of East Anglia, 2018

Schmitt, Samuel Armstrong, “The Paston Manuscripts in Context: a study of Folger Shakespeare Library MSS V.a. 405–473”, Catholic University of America, 2004

Sequera, Hector, “House Music for Recusants in Elizabethan England: Performance Practice in the Music Collection of Edward Paston (1550-1663)”, University of Birmingham, 2010

Smith, A.R., Aspects of the Career of Sir John Fastolf (1380-1459), Unpublished DPhil Theses (1982)
ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:82b30e31-1412-495b-bc5d-426dd6aac852

Tyrell, Karine, “Margaret Paston: a 15th Century Woman and her Family”,, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 1984

Weir, Gillian, “Spelling, Punctuation and Material Culture in the Later Paston Letters”, University of Glawgow, 2018

A Paston Bibliography

Historical Novel – an excellent way to get to know the Paston characters

New to the Pastons?

Paston Research

PhD Theses

Related Primary Documents

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