The present selection contains about one third of the published works of Gerrard Winstanley. In my Introduction I have quoted extensively from pamphlets not here reprinted. Most of them were included by G. H. Sabine in The Writings of Gerrard Winstanley (Cornell University Press, 1941): I refer to this edition as ‘S.’ followed by a page number. Any biographical details for which no reference is given in the Introduction will be found in D. W. Petegorsky's excellent Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War, referred to as Petegorsky. The reader must remember that all of these pamphlets except The Law of Freedom were issued for immediate propaganda purposes: Winstanley therefore sometimes repeats himself when addressing different audiences. But his thought was developing all the time, and so it seemed better to reprint complete pamphlets rather than snippets. Spelling, punctuation and capitalization have been modernized, including even (reluctantly) Winstanley's own name, which he usually wrote ‘Jerrard’.

My main debt of gratitude is to Dr L. D. Hamilton and other members of the Oxford University History Society of 1939–40, who made a complete and most accurate transcript of all Winstanley's writings before they learnt that Sabine had forestalled them. I have drawn on their transcript of The Saints Paradice, which was kindly lent to me by Dr Hamilton, who edited the only selection from Winstanley's works hitherto published in this country.