‘First letters’ can be understood in various ways: as the first letters written by a person, such as the letters of children, or of drafts which were preserved, amended and copied; as the first letter of a particular type, such as an experienced letter-writer’s first love letter; and as the first letter to a new correspondent, among many others. The idea of a first letter also suggests a link with the letters that follow: what is the connection between the first letter and those which come after it? Written by academics specializing in letter-writing internationally, this volume examines the letters of various authors, philosophers, and artists, including Benjamin Constant, José-Maria de Heredia, Voltaire, Diderot, Coleridge, De Quincey, and others. It is structured in four sections: letters from youth; first letters in fictional works; the writer’s persona; and first letters within correspondence.

â ~First lettersâ (TM) can be understood in various ways: as the first letters written by a person, such as the letters of children, or of drafts which were preserved, amended and copied; as the first letter of a particular type, such as an experienced letter-writerâ (TM)s first love letter; and as the first letter to a new correspondent, among many others. The idea of a first letter also suggests a link with the letters that follow: what is the connection between the first letter and those which come after it? Written by academics specializing in letter-writing internationally, this volume examines the letters of various authors, philosophers, and artists, including Benjamin Constant, JosÃ(c)-Maria de Heredia, Voltaire, Diderot, Coleridge, De Quincey, and others. It is structured in four sections: letters from youth; first letters in fictional works; the writerâ (TM)s persona; and first letters within correspondence.

This comprehensive study by leading scholars in an important new field-the history of letters and letter writing-is essential reading for anyone interested in nineteenth-century American politics, history or literature. Because of its mass literacy, population mobility, and extensive postal system, nineteenth-century America is a crucial site for the exploration of letters and their meanings, whether they be written by presidents and statesmen, scientists and philosophers, novelists and poets, feminists and reformers, immigrants, Native Americans, or African Americans. This book breaks new ground by mapping the voluminous correspondence of these figures and other important American writers and thinkers. Rather than treating the letter as a spontaneous private document, the contributors understand it as a self-conscious artefact, circulating between friends and strangers and across multiple genres in ways that both make and break social ties.

Highlighting aspects of his scholarship seldom given sufficient emphasis, this new volume of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye documents Frye's writings on the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (apart from those on William Blake, which are featured in other volumes). The volume includes Frye's seminal 1956 essay "Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility" and the highly influential 1968 book A Study of English Romanticism. With these pieces and the other published and unpublished works contained in the volume, Frye changed the way the transition from the major Augustan figures to the Romantics was viewed. These works are a central part of Frye's long and radical rethinking of the relation of romance and Romanticism and, through them, he emerges as a meticulous textual critic, teasing out the fine brushstroke effects in writers as varied as Boswell and Beddoes, Dickens and Dickinson. Imre Salusinszky's introduction and annotation illuminates Frye's writing and guides the reader along the path of Frye's five-decade development of thought on Romanticism. This volume is an invaluable contribution to studies on Frye, as well as to Romantic and Victorian literature.

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in correspondence both as a literary genre and as cultural practice, and several studies have appeared, mainly spanning the centuries between Early and Late Modern times. However, it is between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the roots of contemporary usage begin to evolve, thanks to the circulation of new educational materials and more widespread schooling practices. In this volume, chapters representing diverse but complementary methodological approaches discuss linguistic and discursive practices of correspondence in Late Modern Europe, in order to offer material for the comparative, cross-linguistic analyses of patterns occurring in different social contexts. The volume aims to provide a general and solid methodological structure for the study of largely untapped language material from a variety of comparable sources, and is expected to appeal to scholars and students interested in the linguistic history of epistolary writing practices, as well as to all those interested in the more recent history of European languages.

Abstract: My work creates a methodology for reading American letters, building from scholarly predecessors such as Susan Fitzmaurice and James Daybell by emphasizing performance in epistolarity. My dissertation argues that the American female letter-writer engaged in a deft, practiced performance each time she picked up a pen. I suggest that the so-called "private," familiar letter should no longer be read as a transparent document or treated as a subset of autobiography; instead, we should see it as the writing mode women manipulated to become public, published authors, an argument that challenges two germinal studies of the public/private spheres in the eighteenth century: Habermas's theory that the eighteenth-century public sphere(s) excluded women and Michael Warner's thesis that the printing press was the sole exclusive catalyst for the republic's formation. Using the archival correspondence of New Englanders, Scottish-Americans, Southern British-Americans, an Englishwoman and others, I show how interconnected transnational and transatlantic female letter-writers were, passing each other poems, essays, and history texts so that their friends could read and share them with legislators, printers, statesmen, newspapers, and other women, forming a tightly interwoven network I call "the epistolary salon." Since many of these women wrote using pseudonyms, I suggest that the letter-writing space allowed them to dress in drag, cross-dressing on paper to discuss the topics (like politics) that would normally "unsex" them. The first section of the dissertation examines letters written during the late eighteenth century, addressing how women made public their opinions about politics, gender roles, and educational reform via letter-writing. The second section of the project concerns how early nineteenth-century female travel-writers engaged in discussions about nationalism and aesthetics while touring Scotland, France, Italy, and Germany. My project closes with a discussion of the historical migration of letters into canonical texts, particularly sentimental novels, suggesting that they were as much about flawed exercises in epistolarity as they were about the preservation of female virtue. Through The Coquette, Charlotte Temple, and Female Quixotism, I trace the failed epistolary performances of the novel's main characters, relying on eighteenth-century letter-writing manuals to foreground my argument.