Synopses & Reviews
The literary importance of letters did not end with the demise of the eighteenth-century epistolary novel. In the turbulent period between 1789 and 1830, the letter was used as a vehicle for political rather than sentimental expression. Against a background of severe political censorship, seditious Corresponding Societies, and the rise of the modern Post Office, letters as they are used by Romantic writers, especially women, become the vehicle for a distinctly political, often disruptive force. Mary Favretâs study of Romantic correspondence reexamines traditional accounts of epistolary writing, and redefines the letter as a âfeminineâgenre. The book deals not only with letters which circulated in the novels of Austen or Mary Shelley, but also with political pamphlets, incendiary letters and spy letters available for public consumption.
Synopsis
This study of correspondence in the Romantic period calls into question the common notion that letters are a particularly âromanticâ, personal, and ultimately feminine form of writing.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-264) and index.
Table of Contents
'Preface: The Public Letter, or âLa Lettre Perfideâ; 1. History and the fiction of letters; 2. Letters or letters; politics, interception and spy fiction; 3. Helen Maria Williams and the letters of history; 4. Mary Wollstonecraft and the business of letters; 5. Jane Austen and the look of letters; 6. The letters of Frankenstein; Conclusion: the death of the letter fiction, the Post Office and âThe English Mail Coachâ; List of works cited.\n
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