British and American Letter Manuals, 1680-1810

ISBN-13: 9781851969180 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 1712 str.

Opis

During the eighteenth century, letter manuals became the most popular form of conduct literature. They were marketed to and used by a wide spectrum of society, from maidservants and apprentices, through military officers and merchants, to gentlemen, courting couples, parents and children. This four-volume facsimile edition makes available the most influential manuals from both sides of the Atlantic. Letter manuals taught their readers conventions and practices of letter writing and reading designed to overcome regional differences in language and culture and to create a single standard of polite communication. At the same time, London manuals were transformed and adapted to local needs and tastes throughout the Atlantic world, by regional printers who made Scottish and American manuals a proto-nationalist genre. Modern readers can use letter manuals to learn the commonplaces which correspondents were taught to repeat and vary in their own letters, and to see how departures from these commonplaces functioned as significant statement. These conventions were familiar to writers from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, and Samuel Richardson to Walter Scott.

O autorze

Eve Tavor Bannet