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By 1840, the epistolary novel was dead. Letters in Victorian
fiction, however, were unmistakably alive. By examining a variety
of works from authors including Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and
Arthur Conan Doyle, Postal Plots addresses why. It explores how
Victorian postal reforms encouraged the lower and middle classes to
read and write, allowed them some social and political agency, and
led many to literature. The writers born of postal reforms
increased stratification between Victorian novelists, already
struggling to define themselves as literary professionals. The
reform-inspired readers threatened the novelists' development by
flouting distinctions between high and low literature. Letters in
Victorian novels thus become markers of the novelists' concerns
about the hierarchies and mediocrities that threatened Victorian
fiction's artistic progress and social contribution. Postal Plots
explores Victorian literary professionals' conflict between their
support for liberal ideals in the literary marketplace and their
fear that they would be unable to bring those changes to pass.
By 1840, the epistolary novel was dead. Letters in Victorian
fiction, however, were unmistakably alive. Postal Plots explores
how Victorian postal reforms unleashed a new and sometimes unruly
population into the Victorian literary marketplace where they
threatened the definition and development of the Victorian literary
professional.
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