This title was first published in 2003. 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. "James How's Epistolary Spaces ...
[contains] a fascinating discussion of the ways the rise of the
postal system created what he calls 'epistolary spaces' ..." Temma
Berg, The Lives and Letters of an Eighteenth-Century Circle of
Acquaintance (2006) "James How's Epistolary Spaces ... reconstructs
in meticulous detail the history of the national postal system and
its effects on letter writing, from the Renaissance to the 18th
century ... How also highlights the role of the new postal system
in connecting all the people of England to the capital city of
London ..." Sonia De Angelis, 'Status Quaestionis (2011) "According
to James How, the foundation of a Post Office in England in the
1650s ... [ensured that] the way was open to experiment in all that
a correspondence could achieve: it opened up new forms of
petitioning the state and the aristocracy; novels like Richardson's
Clarissa ... suggested that a whole life could be lived in an
epistolary space." Martyn Lyons, Culture and History Digital
Journal (2012) "... a pioneering work of literary and cultural
criticism, well-researched, which renews scholarly debates about
epistolary communication in early modern England."Jay Caplan,
Eighteenth Century Book Reviews Online "How writes vividly about
the difference between the private carriage of a letter and the
sending of a letter into impersonal common spaces, where it jostles
up against other people's letters ... his account of these 'eager
and enthusiastic consumers of the new space of mind opened up by
the Post office', a space he compares to cyberspace, offers a
provocative explanation for the appearance of the epistolary novel
..." Jocelyn Harris, The Age of Johnson"How's book is particularly
valuable for [its] attention to the institutional history and the
cultural contexts that informed and shaped letter-exchanges at this
time." Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, Prose Studies "Mr How offers us a
useful new term in letter writing, 'epistolary space' ... Readers
will benefit from reading [his] analysis of the nature of
epistolary spaces and the growth of the postal system that changed
letter writing practice; they will also appreciate a fascinating
group of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century letter writers."
Cynthia Lowenthal, The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats "... there is
much to admire [here], not least the painstaking immersion in
social, personal, political and historical context, particularly,
but by no means exclusively, with regard to the foundation of the
Post Office and its impact on a range of activities, including,
obviously, letter-writing and, less obviously, interception and
counter espionage. The correspondents looked at are, moreover, not
quite the usual suspects while still remaining in some measure
either central to, or characteristic of, their times and stations."
Allan Ingram, Modern Language Review
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
