'Written in an elegant and readable style, Groom's book is filled with much substantial, never gratuously erudite, scholarship. More importantly it provides a unique occasion to rediscover a text that prefigures the contradictions, innovations and concerns of a whole cultural phase as one of the founding, epoch-making texts of British as well as European Romantic culture.'Diego Saglia, British Asoc. for Romatic Studies, Issue 17, March 2000.'Groom's study captures Percy's adaptation of new ideas of authenticity circulating in the mid-to-late eighteenth century . Theory never encumbers Groom's discussions but usefully blends in with them.'Diego Saglia, British Asoc. for Romatic Studies, Issue 17, March 2000.

'The first book-length study of Thomas Percy's Reliques to appear for a long time . Particularly interesting is the reconstruction of the different professional contacts established by Persy during the 'making' of his collection with intellectuals as diverse as William Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson.'Diego Saglia, British Asoc. for Romatic Studies, Issue 17, March 2000.'Nick Groom's microbibliographical analysis of The Making of Percy's Relique's is extraordinarily detailed, yet lucid and entertaining.'Katherine Turner, TLS 26/11/99.