ABSTRACT
This chapter explores historical studies that work with the sampling techniques used in social survey research, in which a sample is drawn from the larger population to be studied. It describes historical work that uses personal testimony for the evidence it contains concerning not only 'facts' but also the feelings, attitudes, values and behaviours of the larger population to which narrators belong. The chapter discusses the practice of historians who distance themselves from the idea of the 'representative sample'. It identifies types of historical practice that likewise value the potential of the individual case to throw light on the relationship between the subject and the wider social and cultural context, but address the issue of exceptionality more directly. The concept of 'the exceptional normal' is a useful way of perceiving the transient appearance of such people in an archive.
