The depth of Atkinson's research is impressive and his conclusions will provide ballad scholars with much food for thought. The author quite elegantly makes the case for an interaction between written and oral transmission of ballads for over half a millennium, effectively challenging many of the received tropes of ballad studies.
James Revell Carr
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Honoured with the Folklore Society’s Katharine Briggs Award for 2014, David Atkinson’s latest book is an intellectually alert, extensively documented [...]. The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts is out of the ordinary in relation to ballad studies.
Tom Pettitt
"The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts". Folklore (0015-587X), vol. 129, no. 1, 2018. doi:10.1080/0015587X.2017.1400817