ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses different epistolary modes: letter-writing manuals, love letters, letters of friendship, letters exposing political secrets, single-author friendship letters and philosophical letters rather than singular individual forms. Friendship letters were used to claim equality amongst writers; the discourse of friendship implied the ideals of a republic of letters. At the Restoration, royalists like Margaret Cavendish sought to associate printed familiar letters with public debate in order to claim citizenship in a republic of letters sustained within the royal state, while disavowing the alleged secrecy of royalism. In spite of the activity of female letter-writers in print and manuscript, the republic of letters was predominantly theorised as a masculine sphere. Sustained by familiar epistolary discourse, each republic of letters imagined holds unfamiliar others at bay. Although some of Montagu's letters are feminine in that they address women; concern feminine sociability; and overtly sidestep masculine topics, they do not envisage a purely feminine community.
