Paston Letters

The Paston Letters are a collection of correspondence and official documents written and received by three generations of the Paston family of Norfolk, England, and their associates, between 1422 and 1509. The letters span the Wars of the Roses and the early Tudor period and document the family legal disputes, business dealings and daily concerns in unusual detail for the era. Because they were written in vernacular English rather than Latin or French, historians and linguists also use them as evidence for the Great Vowel Shift, the transition from Late Middle English to Early Modern English. The collection is considered one of the most important surviving bodies of private correspondence from medieval England.