...[a] rich and in many ways groundbreaking book... In short, the importance of this book does not lie as much in its contribution to the complex and increasingly irrelevant debate about the relation between the oral and the written in the early modern period as in the large body of traditional discourse which it has made accessible for the first time in an accurate and well-sourced form.

• Introduction: The Oral and the Literate ; 71. Popular Speech ; 2. Proverbial Wisdom ; 3. Old Wives' Tales and Nursery Lore ; 4. The Historical Imagination ; 5. Local Custom, Memory, and Record ; 6. Ballads and Libels ; 7. Rumour and News ; Conclusion

...[a] rich and in many ways groundbreaking book... In short, the importance of this book does not lie as much in its contribution to the complex and increasingly irrelevant debate about the relation between the oral and the written in the early modern period as in the large body of traditional discourse which it has made accessible for the first time in an accurate and well-sourced form.

• Introduction: The Oral and the Literate ; 71. Popular Speech ; 2. Proverbial Wisdom ; 3. Old Wives' Tales and Nursery Lore ; 4. The Historical Imagination ; 5. Local Custom, Memory, and Record ; 6. Ballads and Libels ; 7. Rumour and News ; Conclusion

...[a] rich and in many ways groundbreaking book... In short, the importance of this book does not lie as much in its contribution to the complex and increasingly irrelevant debate about the relation between the oral and the written in the early modern period as in the large body of traditional discourse which it has made accessible for the first time in an accurate and well-sourced form.

• Introduction: The Oral and the Literate ; 71. Popular Speech ; 2. Proverbial Wisdom ; 3. Old Wives' Tales and Nursery Lore ; 4. The Historical Imagination ; 5. Local Custom, Memory, and Record ; 6. Ballads and Libels ; 7. Rumour and News ; Conclusion