Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence, 1680–1820 (review)

Early in Pride and Prejudice Jane Bennet receives the following letter:

My dear friend,

If you are not so compassionate as to dine today with Louise and me, we shall be in danger of hating each other for the rest of our lives, for a whole day's tête-à-tête between two young women can never end without a quarrel. Come as soon as you can on the receipt of this. My brother and the gentlemen are to dine with the officers. Yours ever, Caroline Bingley

(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice [1813], vol. 1, chap. 7). As Eve Tavor Bannet shows in this fine study, readers familiar with the epistolary conventions taught in letter manuals were equipped to read this short missive in ways that twenty-first-century readers have largely lost. In particular, although Caroline describes Jane as a friend, her peremptory manner and omission of "the proper sentiments for letters of this kind [such as] 'I hope you are not engaged' [or] 'your company you know how we value' belie her allegations of friendship" (xxi). "Letterate" readers, as Bannet calls those able to decode these conventions, would not have been deceived by this ostensibly cordial letter, unlike its good-hearted recipient.

Empire of Letters studies the letter manuals that helped impart letteracy on eighteenth-century readers, providing both an overview of this genre and also a strong argument for their importance as a "largely untapped box of tools, which change the ways in which we can understand and read manuscript, printed and 'literary' letters" (313). Expressions of religious sentiment in letters of condolence, for example, perhaps reveal not a deep religious sentiment but rather a sound understanding of letter-writing conventions. The example from Austen illustrates the ways in which a familiarity with epistolary convention can enrich our reading of other types of writing as well. The first part of the volume reviews the importance of letters to the maintenance of empire, and then enumerates the features of the many guides to the art of letter writing available during the long eighteenth century. Letter manuals provided model letters on a vast range of topics, from letters congratulating the recipient on the safe return from foreign parts to letters reprimanding a wayward nephew to letters requesting release from an unwanted engagement. They also addressed a range of social classes. One striking feature of English letter manuals was the inclusion of a much broader social universe than was the case with French manuals. London manuals, Bannet notes, included letters from maidservants, apprentices, and tradesmen, alongside missives from the gentry. Moreover, she argues, the conventions disseminated via letter manuals are reflected not only in the letters written by the highly literate, but also those of people with little formal education. As evidence she includes, for example, a striking letter by a sixteen-year-old Scottish indentured servant in South Carolina ("I am very sorry that I did not take your Advise and stay at home ..."). Indeed, I would have appreciated the inclusion of more such examples.

The book's middle section traces the transformation of the letter manual from the "secretaries" of the early eighteenth century, through the mid-century "complete letter-writers," to the "arts of correspondence" of the 1790s. Bannet provides a wealth of information about these manuals, and charts some of the broad changes in the messages conveyed by their editors. The mid-century manuals, for example, displayed an aggressive concern with "the control of young women in courtships, ... the disposal of daughters in marriage, and ... the proper marital choices for men at different ranks" (38). At the same time she demonstrates convincingly that apparently similar versions of the same manual may vary dramatically. By offering a careful taxonomy of the many editions of a single manual she shows how different editors constructed entirely different texts by excluding certain letters, rearranging others in a different order...