This text uses UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding. If the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that your browser’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change the default font.

The Gairdner edition of the Paston Letters was printed in six volumes. Each volume is a separate e-text; Volume VI is further divided into two e-texts, Letters and Index. Volume I, the General Introduction, will be released after all other volumes, matching the original publication order.

All brackets are in the original, as are parenthetical question marks and (sic) notations. Series of dots representing damaged text are shown as printed. Note that the printed book used z to represent original yogh ȝ. This has not been changed for the e-text. The copy number (first page of each volume) is hand-written.

The year of each letter was printed in a sidenote at the top of the page; this has been merged with the sidenote at the beginning of each letter. Footnotes have their original numbering, with added page number to make them usable with the full Index. They are grouped at the end of each Letter or Abstract.

Text lightly shaded in violet indicates the site of a typographical error. Hover the cursor over the shaded text, and the explanation should appear. Typographical errors are listed again at the end of the Letter, after any footnotes. In the primary text, errors were only corrected if they are clearly editorial, such as missing italics, or mechanical, such as u-for-n misprints. Italic “d” misprinted as “a” was a recurring problem. The word “invisible” means that there is an appropriately sized blank space, but the letter or punctuation mark itself is missing.

Some Specifics: The spelling “Jhon” is not an error. Gresham and Tresham are different people. Conversely, the inconsistent spelling of the name “Lipyate” or “Lipgate” in footnotes is unchanged.

Early Documents
The Paston Letters: Henry V
The Paston Letters: Henry V
Contents of this Volume

If you are comfortable typing directly into your browser’s address bar, you can go straight to any page or letter. Simply add #pageN or #letterN to the end of the file name, where “N” is the number of the page or letter.