Epistolary Spaces: English Letter-writing from the Foundation of the Post Office to Richardson's "Clarissa"(Studies in Early Modern English Literature)

The author explores and describes the nature of what he terms "epistolary spaces", phenomena that came into being as a result of the foundation during the 1650s of a Post Office available to the general public. He focuses on the history of letter-writing by English men and women, and in so doing he shows how the imaginations of letter writers were affected by the increasingly cheaper, faster and more efficient postal services that were developed throughout the time period covered. The book makes a detailed study of five "real" correspondences, reading the letters in terms of their social and political interest and addressing such concerns as class, gender, collections of model letters and the importance of London to English epistolary spaces. How portrays epistolary spaces variously as arenas in which to explore the new urban culture of London, in the love letters of Dorothy Osborne (1652-4); courtly enclaves, in the diplomatic letters of the dramatist Sir George Etherege (1685-9); and aristocratic redoubts, in the correspondence between the Countesses of Hertford and Pomfret (1739-41). Finally, How examines the letters that constitute Richardson's novel "Clarissa", showing how the artistic achievement of Richardson's greatest novel was aided by almost a century of just such imaginations of epistolary spaces as are to be found in the letters of Clarissa Harlowe, Anna Howe and Robert Lovelace.

Table of Contents:
Introduction - Epistolary spaces: The beginnings of the Post Office; Letters, letter writers, letter readers; Richardson's "Clarissa". Glimmerings of epistolary space in Dorothy Osborne's Letters to Sir William Temple (1652-54): Private carriers vs the Post Office; Dorothy Osborne on 'the Towne'; The development of the Post Office; Glimmerings of epistolary space. 'I have been so long absent from Court' - Sir George Etherege's personal and business letters, a courtly enclave in epistolary space (1685-89): The maturation of the Restoration Post Office; The struggle for control of Restoration epistolary space; Etherege's courtly enclave in epistolary space; The collapse of Etherege's courtly enclave. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters and the Whig schism under George I (1716-18): 'The asmak, or Turkish vail, is become not only very easy but agreeable to me'; Reading the Turkish Embassy Letters as an intervention on behalf of the Walpolian Whigs; Epilogue - The publication of the Turkish Embassy Letters. An epistolary redoubt - The correspondence between the Countesses of Hertford and Pomfret (1738-41): Pressure within the 'Venetian oligarchy'; Pressure upon the 'Venetian oligarchy'; Pressure from the 'Venetian oligarchy'. Petitions and memorials from the edge - The letters of the Rev. Dr Lucius Henry Hibbins to the Duke of Newcastle (1741-58): How to write a petition; A levee in epistolary space; Adjusting to Erastianism. Clarissa's cyberspace - Imaginations of epistolary space in Richardson's "Clarissa": Clarissa's 'good eight hours a day'; Clarissa versus Poststructuralism; Clarissa and London; Clarissa and epistolary space; Conclusion - Space in the 17th and 18th centuries.