Table of Contents

Preface: The Public Letter, or 'La Lettre Perfide'; 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 'The English Mail Coach'; List of works cited.

Promotional Information

This study of correspondence in the Romantic period calls into question the common notion that letters are a particularly 'romantic', personal, and ultimately feminine form of writing.