Interest in English local history has grown considerably in the last twenty years; this book attempts to meet the wide-spread need for a fairly detailed introduction to its sources. It is hoped that it will be of use to undergraduates reading history, to college of education students, to postgraduate students training for teaching or archive work, to those beginning research for higher degrees, to members of adult education classes, and to teachers at various levels, as well as to the many interested amateurs who wish to pursue seriously the study of their neighbourhood.

It is too much to hope that my work contains no errors, for the field I have sought to cover is wide, and in compiling the book I have continually been confronted by the fact of my own ignorance. Clearly I have had to be selective and there are, of course, large numbers of sources with which I have not been able to deal. It will be realized, too, that references can only be up-to-date at the time of going to press. Articles on sources and reference books continue to be published, and some of the older works referred to may well appear as photographic reprints in the near future.