Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence, 1680–1820 by Eve Tavor Bannet; and Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture by Clare Brant (review)

101 horses, what he meant was that they painted Eastern blood horses. It is a testimony to this study that it leaves readers desiring more fully sustained analysis regarding the role of the new breed within the English literary imagination. Anna Battigelli SUNY Plattsburgh EVE TAVOR BANNET. Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence , 1680–1820. New York: Cambridge, 2005. Pp. vii ⫹ 347. $90. CLARE BRANT. Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. viii ⫹ 431. $90. Ms. Brant claims that the epistolary genre is ‘‘the most important kind of writing in the eighteenth century.’’ This assertion’s truth hinges upon the unstated implications of ‘‘important’’— does it refer to aesthetic value, or social and historical significance, or generic influence, or to something else? Her book and Ms. Bannet’s are signal contributions . Published within a year of one another , the two possess several similarities. Both focus centrally upon letter writing in the long eighteenth century. Instead of being organized around a handful of major practitioners (most impressively tendered by Bruce Redford’s 1986 The Converse of the Pen), both use a historicist and interdisciplinary approach. Both are exceptional and impressive. But they differ. While Ms. Brant largely restricts herself to Britain, Ms. Bannet undertakes a global perspective (in particular England, Scotland, and North America). Ms. Brant examines epistles proper, while Ms. Bannet analyzes the genre of epistolary manuals, specimens of writing that ‘‘were among the most frequently reprinted books on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the long eighteenth century’’—an archive testifying to the upwardly mobile aspirations of this transitional and dynamic period. The scope of Ms. Bannet’s Empire of Letters extends from 1687, with the publication of John Hill’s The Young Secretary’s Guide, into the 1820s, when the last of the epistolary manuals began to go out of print. Readers of the Scriblerian will perhaps be most interested in Chapter Three, which examines a series of ‘‘Secretaries’’ published at the turn of the century, and the middle section of Chapter Seven, which assesses the Spectator. Ms. Bannet does not see these epistles as belletristic essays primarily written as satire: ‘‘Far from constituting random fillers, these were organized as a letter manual, that was recommended as a source of models in other manuals throughout the eighteenth century.’’ Her persuasive discussion invites reassessment of the Spectator. Perhaps the most important insight raised by Empire of Letters lies in how insistently eighteenth-century letters conformed to, or resisted and transformed, the prescriptions inscribed in the manuals . A map of largely terra incognita, it should lead readers to reexamine Clarissa , Humphry Clinker, and Evelina, in light of the conventions of these manuals . Ms. Brant’s Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture covers the period 1700 to 1800. She refreshingly retains an aesthetic orientation: ‘‘my commitment is first and foremost to letters as literary objects.’’ And unlike Ms. Bannet, who by and large offers a single basic thesis—the historical importance of the neglected manuals—and argues 102 for it with rigorous single-mindedness, Ms. Brant admits that ‘‘there is no grand narrative working from start to finish.’’ This lack of ideological direction, however , pleasingly allows her to elaborate on such topics as homosociality among the wits, the genealogy of eighteenthcentury emotions, criminal biographies, and the rhetoric of civic humanism (these include canonical authors, for example , Pope, Johnson, Sterne, and Chesterfield ). The result is a baggy, eclectic monster, but a satisfyingly rich and full one. If Ms. Bannet’s study, given its theoretical methodology, arrives at a predictable conclusion—the contribution of letters to the forging of national identity and empire—Ms. Brant’s surprises with its voluminous variety. Both volumes complement one another with a serendipitous symmetry. Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture is organized topically, with chapters devoted to the type of person writing the letter, such as parents, lovers , citizens, and travelers. Empire of Letters, on the other hand, generically explores such conventional types as the business letter, the letter of recommendation , letters of advice, praise, excuse , congratulations, consolation. Both books should become standard reference volumes—as well as points of departure for future investigation. Anthony W...