The annual series The Fifteenth Century has, since the millennial year, focused on what was one of the more unfashionable centuries for historical study, especially among English literary scholars. Usually edited by Linda Clark, it has published high-quality, if tightly focused, articles, usually a dozen or so, and with a decidedly British emphasis. The articles typically do not wander pensively through vexed Big Issues, but most connect to those issues by looking at quite specific instances that touch on them. Few scholars of the period are likely to have read a single volume cover to cover (aside from Dr. Clark) because of the specificity of topics, yet likewise few medievalists have failed to find an article in the series that does not unexpectedly open doors in their research. Many of the articles here started life as conference papers, in this case in the United Kingdom in 2016–2017, but they have been reworked into well-shaped essays that do not betray their origins. And as conference planners can attest, bringing together papers in a unified theme is not always easy. Writing, Records and Rhetoric contains an examination of all three title elements in each chapter, whereas here some are mainly about writing, some are mainly about records, and some about rhetoric, but only the last three essays, especially Dan E. Steward's, discuss all three at once. The unifying theme of the volume is the sufficiently broad “The Word,” since the articles all focus in “specific words or use of language” (ix), and within that broad frame we have ten well-researched articles by scholars at various stages of their careers.

Looking at the articles themselves, my own research interests led me first to Julia Boffey's essay detailing Reader's Digest versions of Ranulf Higden's Polychronicon, John Mandeville's Travels, and the Brut created during the fifteenth century and later for the reading pleasure of mainly London merchants and travelers who lacked the time or inclination to read the voluminous whole. Boffey's encyclopedic knowledge of manuscript and print sources, and of London tastes in general, coupled with her usual crisp writing style, make this lively as well as informative. In another essay on English political literature, Michael Bennett detects a possible author of the fifteenth-century Libelle of English Policy. Bennett replaces the previous, improbable, assignment of the work to Adam Moleyns, with Nicholas Lassy/Lacy, author of a petition (Bodleian MS Lyell 32 f. 28) that shows similar interests. Bennett wisely shows great caution in assembling the records about the many Lacys around at the time and tells us much about one of the most interesting English political poems of the century. Also, on English readership questions, the reading habits of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, have already been studied as part of women's readership, but J. L. Laynesmith broadens the view of her as “a familiar exemplar” of piety and mysticism, showing her (likely) reading in her earlier years to be both wider and more connected to her surroundings than suggested in earlier studies.

Other essays focus on purely historical themes. In John Milner's chapter, scholars of the early Lancastrian period now have a suitably compact but detailed biography of William, Lord Roos of Helmsley (c. 1370–1414), a faithful retainer whose name seems to turn up on every third record from the reign of Henry IV especially, but about whom nobody seems to have anything special to say. Tom Johnson gives a revisionist view of the traditional view that the English Forest Laws were poorly administered after the fourteenth century, arguing that a combination of a loss of records and a larger assumption of administration at the local level has given a false impression of royal indifference to enforcing the laws. The ten fifteenth-century bishops of Dunkeld and four (known) of Sodor in Scotland are contrasted by Sarah Thomas using not the Scottish episcopal records, which are all destroyed, but mainly the papal petitions in the Avignon and Lateran Registers.

Propaganda is the theme that Ben Pope tackles, centering on the long-running enmity between upper German towns and rural nobles from the mid-fifteenth century, using as example Albrecht Achilles, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and his antagonism toward Nurnberg especially. Albrecht carried the propaganda war vigorously from Swabia to Franconia, with long-term results, although to little immediate effect for his own cause.

The concluding three essays actually deal with writing, rhetoric, and documents, if to varying degrees, and each is strong and enlightening. Most comprehensive is Dan E. Seward's valuable essay tracing humanist rhetoric in parliamentary sermons to Bishop John Alcock, Henry VII's second chancellor and founder of Jesus College, Cambridge, and dismissing claims that they originated with John Russell a year or two earlier. Seward gives a detailed description of classical references and rhetorical methods in Alcock's sermons and further discusses classical influences in opening sermons as far back as Henry Beaufort, Henry V's chancellor. Immediately following is another essay on Alcock; Paul Cavill analyzes Alcock's sermon at St. Paul's Cross, which used the (too-)clever rhetorical device of comparing the church with the productions of the royal chancery, with Christ as the chancellor, issuing writs of corpus cum causa and the like to sinners while claiming benefit of clergy for his clerks. A related topic is discussed in J. M. Grussmeyer's essay on parliamentary addresses during Lancastrian period to 1447, finding four main themes (the king's oath, Magna Carta, good counsel, the need for a strong ruler, and the call for unity), showing how each topic was used in reaction to a specific situation. In general, Grussmeyer is suspicious of claims of a unified Lancastrian political identity.

Writing, Records and Rhetoric continues successfully Dr. Clark's work of presenting readers with small jewels of research, not all equally appealing to the individual researcher, but each likely to complete a fine gem setting for some lucky investigator.