Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600-1945 / Edition 1

by Rebecca Earle

Overview

This volume of ten essays discusses the pivotal role that letters have played in social, economic and political history from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The recent scholarly interest in the history of reading has as yet yielded few studies which consider letters as a category of readable material. The contributors to this book seek to redress this oversight, viewing letters as texts which can reveal information, not only about their writers and readers, but about the wider historical context in which they were written. Topics covered include the mercantile letter, diplomatic correspondence, and what these epistolary forms suggest about the rise of a polite, literate culture in the eighteenth century; the experience of immigration from Europe to America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the relationship through the letter; and the working of gender in the epistolary form. Rebecca Earle provides an overview of how the study of letter-writing can open up new avenues of historical as well as literary investigation. This, together with contributions form leading international scholars, makes Epistolary Selves an essential text for those researching the letter genre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781840142105
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/28/1999
Series:	Warwick Studies in the Humanities
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.62(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rebecca Earle is a lecturer in the History Department at the University of warwick.

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction: Letters, writers and the historian, Rebecca Earle; Part One: The Letter Collection: ’Paper Visits’: The post-restoration letter as seen through the Verney Archive, Susan Whyman; The immigrant letter between positivism and populism: American historians’ uses of personal correspondence, David Gerber; Part Two: Letters, the Family and Public Life: Formative ventures: eighteenth-century commercial letters and the articulation of experience, Toby Ditz; The Sentimental Ambassador: The letters of George Bogle from Bengal, Bhutan and Tibet, 1770-1781, Kate Teltscher; Letters, social networks and the embedded economy in Sweden: some remarks on the Swedish bourgeoisie, 1800-1850, Ylva Hasselberg; Part Three: Women and the Letter Form: A woman writing a letter, Carolyn Steedman; The power to die: Emily Dickinson’s letters of consolation, Daria Donnelly; ’You let a weeping woman call you home?’: Private correspondence during the first world war in Austria and Germany, Christine Hämmerle; ’Letters are everything these days’: Mothers and letters in the second world war, Jenny Hartley; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

Papers from a March 1996 conference held at the University of Warwick, UK, discuss the pivotal role that letters have played in social, economic, and political history from the 17th to the 20th century, viewing letters as texts which can reveal information not only about their writers and readers, but also about the wider historical context in which they were written. Looks at the mercantile letter and diplomatic correspondence and what these forms suggest about the rise of a literate culture in the 18th century, and explores the experience of immigration from Europe to America through letters, and the relationship of "real-life" letters to the development of the novel. The editor is a lecturer in history at the University of Warwick. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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