Introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Prelim pages i
2. Table of contents v
3. Acknowledgements vii
4. Introduction 1
5. The study of correspondence 13
6. A historical digital archive of Portuguese letters 31
7. Between linguistic creativity and formulaic restriction 45
8. Performing identities and interaction through epistolary formulae 65
9. Fanny to William 89
10. An atypical commercial correspondence 105
11. Reporting the news in English and Italian diplomatic correspondence 121
12. Letters as loot 139
13. The problem of reading dialect in semiliterate letters 163
14. “I will be expecting a letter from you before this reaches you” 179
15. Letters in mechanically-schooled language 205
16. Teaching grammar and composition through letter writing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England 229
17. Index 251