ABSTRACT
The Verneys were an upper-gentry, Buckinghamshire family with a passionate interest in letters. The family amassed one of the largest continuous archives for seventeenth-and eighteenth-century England. Over 100,000 items spanning twelve generations include more than 30,000 personal letters from the 1630s to the mid-eighteenth century.' The preservation of the archive, however, was no accident. Each generation taught the next to docket, catalogue, and protect letters, because they knew their importance.2 Part of the Verneys's strength lay in their silent, beribboned documents. Indeed, Verney history was passed on to each generation through letters. In the process, the family self-consciously used their documents to construct individual, dynastic, and social identities.
