On 5 June 1678, Robert Paston wrote to his wife Rebecca, ‘I gasp after your letters every day … your conversation by penn is the pleasantest thing in the world to mee’.
Once you start reading the Paston letters, they are impossible to put down. This family left an indelible mark on history through the written word. Their story is captured in the earliest and largest surviving family letter collection beyond royal circles. The letters dated from 1418 until 1509 are most often used as a resource when studying social history, medieval language and literature, paper-making and scribal networks. Before the Pastons, a few rogue personal letters survive, but our knowledge of history tends to stem from official court, royal and church documents, or from chronicles, poetry and drama. Without these letters, voices from daily life in the Middle Ages would otherwise have been lost. This is history beyond kings and queens.
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