MAGDALENA & BALTHASAR <i> by Steven Ozment Yale University Press: $9.95, illustrated </i>

The letters Balthasar Paumgartner, a traveling merchant from Nuremburg, and his fiancee and later wife, Magdalena Behaim, exchanged between 1582 and 1598 offer a rare look at daily middle-class life in the 16th Century.

Ironically, their mundane stolidity makes them interesting. Balthasar obviously hated his work and left an increasing number of details to be overseen by his capable spouse. Magdalena’s concern for her husband’s health (she urges him to be bled regularly), her requests for a toy horse for their son, her sad list of friends who die of plague and other diseases, resonate through the intervening centuries and provide a personal counterpoint to the deeds of kings that fill conventional histories. Steven Ozment’s thorough notes provide useful background, although he tends to repeat information contained in the letters.