Epistolary Spaces: English Letter Writing from the Foundation of the Post Office to Richardson's 'Clarissa'.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association

Epistolary Spaces: English Letter Writing from the Foundation of the Post Office to Richardson's 'Clarissa'. By JAMES HOW. (Studies in Early Modern English Literature) Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2003. x+214 pp. 40 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-7546-0354-7.

At the opening of his first chapter, James How quotes Anne Finch's poem 'To a Friend in Praise of the Invention of Letters'. It is supremely apt:

Blest be the man! His memory at least, Who found the art thus to unfold his breast, And taught succeeding times an easy way Their secret thoughts by letters to convey; To baffle absence and secure delight Which, till that time, was limited to sight....

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