Epistolary Practices: Letter Writing in America before Telecommunications / Edition 1

by William Merrill Decker

Overview

Letters have long been read as primary sources for biography and
history, but their performative, fictive, and textual dimensions
have only recently attracted serious notice. In this book, William Merrill Decker examines the place of the personal letter in American popular and literary culture from the colonial to the
postmodern period.
After offering an overview of the genre, Decker explores epistolary practices that coincide with American experiences of
space, settlement, separation, and reunion. He discusses letters
written by such well-known and well-educated persons as John
Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail and John
Adams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Samuel Clemens, Henry James, and Alice James, but also letters by persons who, except in their correspondence, were not writers at all: indentured servants, New England factory workers, slaves, soldiers, and Western pioneers. Individual chapters explore the letter writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Henry Adams—three of America's most ambitious, accomplished, and theoretically astute letter writers. Finally, Decker considers the ongoing transformation of letter writing in the electronic age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807847435
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	11/16/1998
Edition description:	1
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.66(d)
Lexile:	1600L (what's this?)

About the Author

William Merrill Decker, author of The Literary Vocation of Henry Adams, is director of undergraduate programs in English at Oklahoma State University.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface
Abbreviations and Note on Quotations
Introduction
Chapter 1. Burn This Letter: Autograph Missive and Published Text
Chapter 2. I Have Taken This Opportunity of Writing You a Few Lines: A Genre as Popularly Practiced
Chapter 3. I Cannot Write This Letter: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Chapter 4. A Letter Always Seemed to Me Like Immortality: Emily Dickinson
Chapter 5. I Write Now d'Outre Tombe: Henry Adams
Conclusion: Letter Writing in the Era of Telecommunications
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Illustrations
Samuel Clemens to Franke Carpenter Culp, July 28, 1883
John Winthrop to Margaret Winthrop, March 28, 1631
Washington W. McDonough to John McDonough, February 18, 1846
Page from A New Letter-Writer, for the Use of Ladies (1860)
Ralph Waldo Emerson to Caroline Sturgis, September 6, 1840
Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, June 1869
Henry Adams to Anna Cabot Mills Lodge, August 29, 1909

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

One measure of a book's worth is the number of interesting questions it provokes. Add to that carefully researched historical information, sensitive and thought-provoking discussions of literary figures, new insights into the ubiquitous letter form, all presented in elegant prose, and Epistolary Practices must be judged a stunning success.—Prose Studies



[Decker] examines with insight and wit the role of letter writing and what it reveals about human relations. . . . An understandable and nearly jargon-free study.—Choice



William Decker's Epistolary Practices is the first critical work to address the place of the letter—arguably the most widely practiced of literary forms—within American culture. Decker's rich and thoughtful analysis sets the standard for discussions to come, not only about letter writing but, also, about language as an instrument of human need and human community.—Joanne Jacobson, author of Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams



Epistolary Practices presents, for the first time, a detailed study of letter writing in nineteenth-century America. Decker not only helps us to understand this literary genre, but his discussions of Emerson, Dickinson, and Adams as practitioners of it allow us to see these writers as masters of the craft. This is a valuable book for anyone interested in nineteenth-century writing styles.—Joel Myerson, editor of The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Editorial Reviews

ÝDecker¨ examines with insight and wit the role of letter writing and what it reveals about human relations.

"Choice"

Decker's rich and thoughtful analysis sets the standard for discussions to come.

Joanne Jacobson, author of "Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams"

This is a valuable book for anyone interested in nineteenth-century writing styles.

Joel Myerson, editor of "The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson"

"Decker's rich and thoughtful analysis sets the standard for discussions to come.

Joanne Jacobson, author of "Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams""

"Epistolary Practices" must be judged a stunning success.

"Prose Studies"

"This is a valuable book for anyone interested in nineteenth-century writing styles.

Joel Myerson, editor of "The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson""

[Decker] examines with insight and wit the role of letter writing and what it reveals about human relations.

"Choice"

From the Publisher