The Importance of Context

Thanks to the Internet, more primary sources are available to us historical novelists than ever before. As the availability of such sources grows, however, so does another danger: that the sources will be interpreted out of context. Karen Clark over at A Neville Feast has blogged about an excellent example of this: a letter by the Earl of Warwick in which his use of the phrase "destruction of some of my kinsmen" in official correspondence in reference to the deaths of his father and his broth...