ABSTRACT
A few local historians possess sufficient means to enable them to publish their own work in a suitable form. Sir Matthew Nathan's history of the small Somerset village of West Coker appeared in this way in 1957. Some local historians have put a good deal of their town or parish history into print in instalments, either printed and published independently or published as a series of articles in the Transactions or Proceedings of the local Historical or Antiquarian Society. Department of English Local History at the University of Leicester, founded in 1948 as the first department of its kind in any university, also offers a possible channel of publication. The great bulk of local history is written by amateurs whose time for writing, or for continuous periods of writing, is severely limited by all the other duties they have to perform.
