Epistolary Histories Letters, Fiction, Culture
- List Price: $59.50
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr
- Publish date: 08/01/2000
Focusing mainly on Anglo-American texts from the seventeenth century to the present day, these nine essays and their "postscripts" engage the relationship between epistolary texts and discourses of gender, class, politics, and commodification. Ranging from epistolary histories of Mary Queen of Scots to Turkish travelogues, from the making of the modern middle class and the correspondence of Melville and Hawthorne to new epistolary innovators such as Kathy Acker and Orlan, the contributions are divided into three parts: part 1 addresses the "feminocentric" focus of the letter; part 2, the boundaries between the fictional and the real; and part 3, the ways in which the epistolary genre may help us think more clearly about questions of critical address and discourse that have preoccupied theorists in recent years.
In sum, Epistolary Histories is a defining contribution to epistolary studies.