"One of the most unusual features of this book is its expansiveness. I cannot think of another academic history monograph that gives so much space to the stories themselves.--Social History of Medicine

"Murray tells his stories with great verve and then mulls them over, bringing to bear all the tools of source analysis, but he is never afraid to offer a final opinion of his own. The result is immensely readable."--Social History of Medicine

"The years of effort that went into this task have paid rich dividends...This volume provides us with by far the most detailed record of medieval suicide to date."--Medical History

"Alexander Murray is the author of Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (1978), an exemplary 'new' history, which reinterprets medieval mentalities on a European scale. Suicide in the Middle Ages is a magnum opus which has been long awaited. It is projected as a trilogy, of which the volume reviewed here is the first...Searching for suicides has made Murray a pioneer in the comparative study of the legal records of medieval Europe."--M. T. Clanchy, Times Literary Supplement