The Paston Letters are a collection of correspondence between members of the Paston family of Norfolk gentry and others connected with them in England between the years 1422 and 1509. The collection also includes state papers and other important documents.

The letters are a noted primary source for information about life in England during the Wars of the Roses and the early Tudor period. They are also of interest to linguists and historians of the English language, being written during the Great Vowel Shift, and documenting the transition from Late Middle English to Early Modern English.

The large collection of letters and papers was acquired in 1735 from the executors of the estate of William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth, the last in the Paston line, by the antiquary Francis Blomefield. On Blomefield's death in 1752 they came into the possession of Thomas Martin of Palgrave, Suffolk. On his death in 1771 some letters passed into the hands of John Ives, while many others were purchased by John Worth, a chemist at Diss, whose executors sold them in 1774 to Sir John Fenn of East Dereham.

In 1787 John Fenn published a selection of the letters in two volumes, bringing general interest to the collection. Fenn published two further volumes of letters in 1789. Before he died in 1794 he prepared a fifth volume for publication, which was posthumously published in 1823 by his nephew William Frere. In 1787 Fenn presented the originals of his first two volumes to King George III, who knighted Fenn on 23 May 1787. Shortly thereafter, the manuscripts for all five volumes disappeared ^[when?], casting doubt on the authenticity of the letters. In 1865 their authenticity was questioned by Herman Merivale in the Fortnightly Review, but James Gairdner countered that they were genuine in the same periodical. Within a year, Gairdner was proven right by the discovery of the originals of the fifth volume, together with other letters and papers, by Frere's son, Philip Frere, in his house at Dungate. Ten years later the originals of Fenn's third and fourth volumes, with ninety-five unpublished letters, were found at Roydon Hall, Norfolk, the seat of George Frere. Finally the originals of the two remaining volumes were rediscovered in 1889 at Orwell Park, Ipswich, in the residence of Captain E. G. Pretyman. The last letters to be found were the letters presented to George III; they may have reached Orwell through Sir George Pretyman Tomline, the tutor and friend of William Pitt the Younger.

Most of the Paston letters and associated documents are now in the British Library, but some are in the Bodleian Library, Oxford at Magdalen College, with a few at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Fenn's edition of the Paston Letters was considered definitive until 1872, when James Gairdner published the first volume of a new edition. Taking Fenn's work as a basis, Gairdner ultimately published over four hundred previously unpublished letters in three volumes. Gairdner's edition included notes and an index, and introductions to each volume containing a survey of the reign of King Henry VI. Before he had published all the volumes of his edition, some letters that he had written about were discovered in 1875 at Roydon. These unpublished letters were added as a supplement to a subsequent three-volume edition published in 1896. In 1904 Gairdner edited a complete edition of the Paston Letters in six volumes, containing 1,088 letters and papers with a new introduction.

The Paston Letters 1422–1509 AD: A New Edition First Published in 1874 Containing Upwards of Four Hundred Letters, Etc., Hitherto Unpublished. Edited by James Gairdner of the Public Record Office

Paston Letters 1422–1509 AD: A Reprint of the Edition of 1872–5 which Contained upwards of Five Hundred Letters, etc., till then Unpublished to Which are now Added Others in a Supplement after the Introduction. Edited by James Gairdner of the Public Record Office