Letters have been ordered by chronology. Dates are given in Old Style, with the year taken to begin on 1 January; when the letter was originally dated in New Style, the equivalent Old Style date has been provided in the heading for consistency. Primarily the letters were given Old Style dates, either by the writer or by Anthony Bacon's secretaries, who endorsed most of his letters. Very occasionally, however, Anthony's secretaries are inconsistent as to whether they take the year to begin on 25 March or 1 January; unless there is evidence to the contrary, it has been assumed that endorsements follow the standard practice of the year beginning on 25 March, which in this edition is then altered to reflect the year beginning on 1 January.Footnote ¹ The endorsement and the date given by the letter-writer are often the same; Anne's letters reveal evidence that she expected the bearer to deliver her letter to London and return to Hertfordshire on the same day.Footnote ² On other occasions, the date given in the letter and the endorsement can be days apart.Footnote ³ When there is no dating given by the letter-writer, however, then the date of endorsement has been taken as the date. Undated letters have been placed in chronological order, as far as the internal evidence allows, and the reasoning behind the decision is explained fully in the footnotes. In some cases, this has presented particular difficulties, when the internal evidence is very inexact.

The location of the letter is given in terms of repository of origin and volume; folio numbers are given whenever possible, but when there are no folios numbers then the document number is provided. The Lambeth letters have an earlier ‘article’ number for each letter as well as more recent folio numbers, but only folio numbers have been given in this edition. The majority of Anne's letters are bifolium: she folded her sheets of paper in half to create four writing sides, although, like her contemporaries, she aimed only to write on the front side of the first folio.Footnote ⁴ Anthony's drafts are generally only written on one folio, although sometimes utilizing both sides. In each instance, the folio numbers for the entire letter are given in the heading, although, unless otherwise indicated, the body of the letter is written on the recto side of the first folio. If the text of the manuscript letter continues on further folios, then that is noted in italic square brackets and the text broken up to reflect the material nature of the original letter. It is indicated whether or not the letter is ‘holograph’.Footnote ⁵ Endorsements are given whenever present; any later markings on the letters are not given. The superscription on the letter is also given, where present, under ‘Addressed’.

Original spelling has been retained throughout. The use of ‘u’/‘v’ and ‘i’/‘j’ has been regularized according to modern usage, and the ‘con’/‘cion’ suffix has been amended to the modern ‘tion’ form; ‘ff’ is rendered as ‘f’ or ‘F’, depending on context. Additional punctuation has been provided; Anne, for example, often used the edge of the paper to infer the ends of sentences, so it was felt that adding more punctuation would aid the reader. Capitalization has been modernized, excluding titles, discussed further below. The original paragraph structure has largely been kept, although letters have been broken into additional paragraphs on occasion, in order to help the reader. Lineation has not been kept, because the majority of the letter-writers included in this edition ‘justified’ their own writing (see figure 3), so it was felt that preserving lineation did not always preserve the way that the letter looked on the page.

Abbreviations have generally been silently expanded; unnecessary abbreviation marks have been ignored. Exceptions are ‘Mtr’ or ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’, and ‘Dr’, which are left abbreviated in line with modern usage. Other titles (such as ‘Ma^tie’, ‘Lo’, ‘La’, ‘S^r’) have all been silently expanded but left capitalized. Abbreviations of ‘lettre’ (‘lttr’, ‘lre’) within the body of letters have been expanded, but left in the original French; as it was a widely used abbreviation, ‘lettre’ has not been italicized to indicate a foreign word. Anne used ‘dd’, as did many of her contemporaries, to stand for ‘delivered’, so that has been silently expanded; her use of ‘re’ to stand for ‘receive/d’ has likewise been expanded.Footnote ⁶ Thorns have been rendered as ‘th’ and ampersands as ‘and’; et cetera (‘&c’) has been left abbreviated. Numerals have been transcribed as written, a mixture of Roman and Arabic. Abbreviations concerning money have also been left as they were written; pounds, shillings, and pence were written as ‘l’ for librae, ‘s’ for solidi, and ‘d’ for denarii. Names, both forenames and surnames, have been transcribed as they were originally written, although abbreviated names have been expanded in unambiguous cases. Place-names have likewise been transcribed as written and silently expanded, if there is no confusion over the location.

Additions or corrections have been noted by the use of ^ at the beginning and end of the insertion; the use of ^^ denotes the start and finish of corrections within an addition. Some of the letters are damaged and in those cases attempts have been made to supply obscured words in square brackets. When sections of the letter are completely obscured, then the missing sections are indicated ‘[. . .]’. Deleted words are given in the body of the text, but crossed through, so that the reader can see the drafting process clearly. Repetition of words by the writer has been noted in the footnotes.

Anne's handwriting has caused particular difficulties. Her use of the so-called ‘swash e’ is very variable. Sometimes she uses it to stand for a terminal ‘es’, while at other times it merely indicates a terminal ‘s’.Footnote ⁷ For consistency, unless modern usage demands the additional ‘e’, then Anne's use of the ‘swash e’ has simply been transcribed as a terminal ‘s’. For her correspondents’ letters, the swash ‘e’ has been transcribed as an ‘es’.

The use of foreign languages within letters is italicized. Accents and breathing signs have been noted where they occur in the original manuscript. In the transcription of Greek, sigmas have been preserved as they were written, for example retaining medial sigmas when used in place of terminal sigmas. Greek ligatures have been expanded. In most cases, an English translation is given in the footnotes, with an indication as to the language of the original phrase. One exception to this rule regards the endorsements. Anthony's secretaries endorsed his letters in French; the standard endorsement was ‘lettre de Madame’ (‘letter from the mistress’) or ‘lettre a Madame mere de Monsieur’ (‘letter to the mistress, mother of the master’). For these standard endorsements, or endorsements where the only additional information is the date or additional writer/recipient, then no translation is given. Where the endorsement provides additional information regarding delivery, then an English translation is provided in the footnotes. Another exception to the rule regarding translations relates to Anne's provision of dating details in the letters, as she often gives the day and the month in Latin. As the date is also provided in the letter heading, the majority of these details are not translated in the footnotes. Where the entire letter is in a foreign language, then the language of the letter is noted in the heading and the translation follows the original. In those cases, references have been provided to the complete English translation, for the reader's convenience.

Unless otherwise stated, quotations from scripture are from the Geneva Bible (1560).Footnote ⁸ Anne must have owned a copy of this version, as she followed its division into chapter and verse in her letter to the earl of Essex; Anthony also followed the exact translation of the Geneva Bible in one of his letters.Footnote ⁹

For individuals occurring regularly in the letters, biographical details are supplied at their first appearance. Many of the letters concern tenants and servants and, in those cases, any information known about the individual is likewise provided at their first mention.