Abstract
The Paston letters represent the largest preserved collection of English correspondence by a fifteenth‐century Norfolk family of landed gentry. Spanning three generations and written against the backdrop of the Wars of the Roses, the letters offer insights into the political and social challenges the Paston family weathered and vividly detail the activities involved in managing their family's household and estate business during this tumultuous period. Margaret Paston's letters in particular document her daily involvement in estate affairs, from composing shopping lists and arranging marriages to defending and protecting Paston property and honor. As a genre of Middle English prose, these letters show one provincial family's pragmatic participation in epistolary culture and the full range of material and literate practices involved in their composition and dispatch. The Paston women's letters likewise shed light on their reliance on and daily engagement with one of the few expressive forms available to them.
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