Blackwell UK
The Paston Women: Selected Letters
Selected Letters
ISBN: 9781843840244
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
The Correspondence of the Pastons, a fifteenth-century Norfolk family, is one of only two substantial collections of letters and documents to have survived from the period, and is unique in the volume of women's correspondence it contains. This selection includes letters from three generations of Paston women: Agnes Paston, her daughter-in-law Margaret, and Margaret's own daughter-in-law Margery, together with correspondence from other women family members and associates. An introduction places the letters in the context of medieval women's writing and letter writing; the interpretive essay examines what the letters reveal about the lives of particular women - domestic responsibilities, education, piety, health, and female friendship - from an ambitious provincial family in the late middle ages. More
Reviews:
Watt's translations balance both readability and literalness. (...)an accessible edition devoted to one of the most interesting set of extant documents written by late medieval English women. MEDIEVAL REVIEW
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The Paston letters form one of only two surviving collections of fifteenth-century correspondence, in their case especially rich in letters from the women of the family. Clandestine love affairs, secret marriages, violent family rows, bickering with neighbours, battles and sieges, threats of murder and kidnapping, fears of plague: these are just some of the topics discussed in the letters of the Paston women. Diane Watt's introduction seeks to place these letters in the context of medieval women's writing and medieval letter writing. Her interpretive essay reconstructs the lives of these women by examining what the letters reveal about women's literacy and education, life in the medieval household, religion and piety, health and medicine, and love, marriage, family relationships, and female friendships in the middle ages. Diane Watt is Professor of English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
